Word: signallers
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Until recently, Zeki believed that without the area known as V1, the part of the brain that first receives input from the retina, conscious visual perception would be impossible. V1 is a sort of clearinghouse, a place where incoming signals are split up and sent to the sites where they can be processed. But one patient, a 38-year-old man whose V1 for one eye was wiped out in an automobile accident, is also quite clearly aware of motion seen by the "blind" eye even when the good eye is covered. "We find," says Zeki, "that he is consciously...
...York University Medical School neuroscientist Dr. Rodolfo Llins also thinks coordinated electrical signals give rise to consciousness, though his idea is subtly different from Crick and Koch's. Llinas believes that the firing of neurons is not just simultaneous but also coordinated. Using a highly sensitive device called a magnetoencephalograph, which indirectly measures the electric currents within the brain, Llinas measured the electrical response to external stimuli (he used musical tones). What he observed was a series of perfectly timed oscillations. Says Llinas: "The electrical signal says that a whole lot of cells must be jumping up and down...
Computer scientists come at the problem from a different direction. The mind is something like a parallel-processing computer, they argue, and consciousness is simply the coordinated signal-processing of individual "agents." These agents, described as simple computer programs, sound a bit like the Damasios' convergence zones. Computer scientists and neuroscientists seem to be arriving at theories that look, in some ways, very similar...
...Grady incident, which will be reviewed in Congress this week, will fault U.S. intelligence snafus -- and may also criticize the Marines for allowing glory-hungry senior officers to go along on the rescue. At least four hours before the downing, U.S. spy organizations had solid intelligence from signal intercepts that surface-to-air missile sites were in the area O'Grady was flying over, but that information never got to his squadron. Three minutes before the shootdown, the National Security Agency knew sam radars were tracking O'Grady's F-16, but an allied command plane lacking key U.S. communications...
...happy with Administration and congressional efforts to free her husband, who faces the death penalty on whatU.S. officials consider trumped-up espionage charges. But she said Mrs. Clinton, who plans to chair the United Nations International Woman's Conference in Beijing in September, would send the "wrong signal" if she made the trip. The First Lady is thinking it over...