neural net

Right, UNCOMMON THERAPY is a very good source of that sort of "developmental needs and how to address them in different ways" book. I don't recall if I mentioned that book before.

Anyway, the concept of a neural net helps make sense of the conscious/unconscious mind metaphor. Action begins as input neurons are excited, processing continues with the brain (sub-section) trying different patterns for "fit" and the coalescing at a maximum low energy point. This seems to be a very close metaphor for how decisions (thought or action) are made in the brain.

In the center of the cortex is an area called the ‘sensory strip.’ The sensory strip is called into the helping role whenever unconditioned stimuli produce too high an agitation in the search process. This is when it acts as a conscious manager of sorts and gets to attach priority to certain possible cases of "fit"...like the limitation that direct: 'well, I don't know the answer but we need to act now with the data we have,' etc. This conscious function then limits the search and possible meanings that could come but speeds up the arrival of the output stage by its filtering. When both parts we are calling conscious and unconscious come have 'learned' the search does not need, or take any undue energy and the output is stronger and quicker. In these cases you might say that if there was a chance for ambiguity or other options to be explored, time and energy will be conserved instead and the learned behavior will be the output that the brain 'means" about situation.

(We, I left Jeff Zeig in Austria about 24 hours ago and need to catch up on my sleep ... so it that message is not comprehensible, let me know. 24 hr. without sleep on an airplane is too much).

Replies:

Re:neural net, by Daniel J. Gorrell, 05/11/01 Re:neural net referrence, by Steve Lankton, 05/23/01