I'm Such A Geek.
7Bistromath
Join Date: 2003-12-04 Member: 23928Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2003-12-04 Member: 23928Members, Constellation
in Off-Topic
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Like, you cut your finger, and your brain knows that you specifically cut your finger, not that just something is wrong in general.
Your finger isn't sending pain itself, only the message of pain. Your brain is then stimulated in a certain spot, and has over the years learned to associate the orgins of pain to the feeling.
This is how amputees get "phantom pains" and can still "feel" their limbs.
The human body is not a single mass. It is a collection of connected organs which work mostly independently of each other. The brain (and in the case of many autonomic functions, the secondary nervous system centered around our stomach) is sort of a server that drives them. Each organ reports its status individually, therefore the brain handles these signals separately.
Re: spinal bandwidth. Apparently it's hard to tell, both because we aren't sure of certain things and because the system is complex. This one discussion I googled up discussed the topic, but didn't actually give a number, because the spine branches off and varies from place to place enough that it's hard to say what the bandwidth is. A discussion on slashdot which was hard for me to follow puts the bandwidth of a nerve fiber at anywhere from 300bps to 5Mbps, depending on which person you ask.
GAHHHH, I can't put what I'm thinking into words.
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roflroflrofl. thankyou 404. that's the best thing i've seen all day.
roflroflrofl. thankyou 404. that's the best thing i've seen all day. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
whiteninjacomics.com can be fit into any conversation!
The answer is what 404 said. The individual nerve endings at the location only send the message "damaged!" When the brain gets all these signals in tandem from a certain point on the nervous network, it reinterprets the signal as there being pain in that area. Since, as far as can be told, your consciousness, the actual part of your body that is "you," is somewhere in your brain, this signal is what matters. In the lizard parts that drive these operations you see, you do not envision yourself as a brain in communication with the parts of your body. Even though it doesn't precisely work that way, because you're in the server that drives these things, you live in sort of a "body image" that recognizes itself as a whole. It's kind of like there's another little tiny version of yourself sitting in your brain controlling your body with the use of a HUD. (HUD meaning the concept of direct sensory input of needful information, as opposed to a separate interface you have to look at.)
yeah, that got to me too. Which poses the question of whether most people's favorite color is in-fact the same interpreted color.
Yeah it comes down to the actual wave length, that and the exact way your eyes interpret the sensory information. As long as the interpretation is done normally, then the color seen would be the "actual" color it is. Perception is subjective then? I really don't want to believe it to such a degree, but I am having a hard time trying to describe a color in innate terms.
Maybe I'm missing part of the puzzle though...
yeah, that got to me too. Which poses the question of whether most people's favorite color is in-fact the same interpreted color. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's what color-blindness tests are for. Our perceptions probably aren't different, since contrasting colors and blending colors have been proven to be consistant.
Maybe I'm missing part of the puzzle though... <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
You're takling about philosophy now, not science. This question is not answerable.
i wish i came up with this, could have wasted alot of time my time <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo-->