[ExI] "Animal-monitoring modules"?

[James Clement]

My recollection is that Jeff Hawkins, in his book "On Intelligence," talks
about various pattern-recognition functions of the brain as operating on a
difference or change basis.  That is, it throws out much of the information
which is familiar and/or redundant and focuses on what's different or
unusual.  Thus, if you're used to seeing something, the brain can focus less
on it.  So maybe what's going on is that modern, urban people are much more
familiar with minivans and their brains can deal with minivan movement more
as "background noise," without the need to focus in on it, whereas we are
much less familiar with elephants moving around in our normal experience and
thus our attention would be drawn much more to them.  An interesting follow
up would be to do the same experiment with people who work with elephants
and are used to them but unfamiliar on a daily basis with minivans, and see
what their reaction would be.

James Clement

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of hkhenson
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 8:51 AM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] "Animal-monitoring modules"?

At 06:07 AM 9/28/2007, Jef wrote:
>On 9/28/07, Josh Cowan <jcowan5 at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> >
> > It won't come as a surprise humans are more attuned to spotting moving
> > animals than moving minivans but a brain module just for such an event?
> > hmmm? What if they had moved berry bushes or potential mates instead of
> > minivans? Do other humans fall under this animal monitoring module?
>
>I haven't read this item, but I would expect it's not so much an
>"animal module" but rather an evolved sensitivity for perception of
>intention and therefore intentional agents including animals, humans,
>spirits, etc.

I would bet you *long* odds that if you redid this work with the 
people under function MRI you would see that there really is a 
module, that is to say a part of the brain that specialized in this task.

Keith Henson 

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