[ExI] pets, mirrors and cryonics

Sat Nov 3 22:54:06 UTC 2012

All this is very fascinating story even if so sad. Alzheimer isa  terrible
disease. I can say that the recognition about one owns face requires
activation of high level cognition networks, breaking down of connectivity
could impair dramatically this function. In fact, recognizing one face in a
mirror is used as a test for self awareness in other animals and supposedly
very few species can do that. Long term memory is distributed over many
areas in the cortex and memory of faces are particular robust. There is
even some evidence that there are particular neurons dedicated to a
particular face identification. What is also interesting is how she
interprets the mirror as a window having lost its ability to reflect. It
kind almost makes sense. It is interesting how the mind is always trying to
make up a story that explains the world even as it dies out.
Best luck to you and your family. Hopefully science can solve this problem
soon.
Giovanni

On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 2:02 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> ** **
>
> Some dogs and cats recognize themselves in a mirror and some do not.  Some
> don’t recognize themselves as kittens and puppies, but later either
> recognize themselves or just get used to the furry thing that passes nearby
> whenever they walk past the mirror, and do not react.  Some pet owners
> remove mirrors from the floor level to deal with the problem, then the
> adult cat still gets their back up when they see themselves.****
>
> ** **
>
> Question please pet owners: are you willing to share how your pet reacts
> to its own image?  Or if the pet’s behavior change over its life?  Anyone
> know if there is an online database on this sort of thing, or a study?****
>
> ** **
>
> There’s a reason why I am asking, that is actually related to cryonics of
> all things, and the reason why I will probably sign up, even if I live long
> enough to suffer extensive brain degradation.  I am currently caring for a
> family member with Alzheimers, a bad case.  She now often does not
> recognize mirrors, commenting that there is a window open or a hole in the
> wall in the bathroom, and that someone was looking in, etc.  She doesn’t
> recognize her own image in the mirror, or rather doesn’t always.  Our
> temporary way to deal is to remove mirrors where practical, but it isn’t in
> all cases: some mirrors are stuck to the wall with adhesive, and I don’t
> want to wreck the drywall trying to get it down, so we thought we might try
> white shoe polish on the mirror, since the wall is white.  Turns out we
> might not need to do that either, for the patient is now afraid to go into
> that downstairs bathroom, for she vaguely remembers there is something
> freaky about it, a strong negative emotion associated with that bathroom,
> such as seeing an elderly woman gazing in a window.  Oy vey.****
>
> ** **
>
> What has all this to do with cryonics?  Last night we were looking at old
> photo albums with the patient, and found a picture from a family vacation
> taken about 20 years ago to Arizona, where we went to see the Grand Canyon
> and the cliff dwellings.  The AD patient astonished us by commenting “Oh
> that’s Serafina Little, who fixed Grandpa’s glasses.”  This was right on:
> Serafina Little was a young Native American woman who had an optometry shop
> on a local reservation.  My father-in-law bent his metal frame glasses, we
> went there, she straightened them, we had a pleasant conversation with her
> for about 20 minutes to half an hour where she explained the Rainbow Bridge
> and its meaning to the native people.  Then we never saw her again.****
>
> ** **
>
> So yesterday when the AD family member was failing to recognize her own
> image in the mirror, she pulled out a name from a pleasant acquaintance we
> met 20 years ago.  So this got me to wondering if any of this has anything
> to do with pets recognizing themselves in a mirror, and if so, is there
> anything we can learn from watching them, and does it tell us anything
> about how information is stored in a damaged or aging brain, and how can we
> use these observations to compare beasts which have little on the way of a
> frontal lobe structures with beasts who have extensive primate brain
> structures?  And if so, is there reason to believe that some information
> somehow stays encoded in a damaged brain, and perhaps can be somehow
> eventually decoded after cryonic suspension?  Are there redundant
> mechanisms whereby some memories are stored somehow in multiple copies like
> a hologram, and some areas of the AD patient’s brain somehow are less
> effected so they retain a version of the memories?  Or is there some kind
> of reasoning process involved in interpreting one’s own mirror image that
> can be damaged while other reasoning areas remain intact, and can it shed
> any light on the question by observing our pets?  Do lizards have any
> self-recognition for instance, with only reptilian brains?  Is
> self-recognition in pets related to their general intelligence, or can you
> have dogs which do not react at all because they are too stupid to
> recognize anything in a mirror, along with dogs who do not react because
> they know the image is themselves, and dogs in the middle of the
> intelligence range, who aren’t sure, but bark anyway?****
>
> ** **
>
> These observations actually encourage me in cryonics, because it tells me
> there is a lot of stuff we don’t understand about how the brain works, and
> perhaps some memories which could be somehow preserved by means we don’t
> understand.****
>
> ** **
>
> Do feel free to allow this discussion to bifurcate into pets, cryonics and
> AD patients, for I realize I just dumped a huge list of only vaguely
> related questions here.****
>
> ** **
>
> spike****
>
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