Digital: Decoding Intelligence - Basics
Vision, language, and motor faculties are I/O channels of human intelligence
Our intelligence is in our I/O channels, not behind them, and if we are to understand intelligence, we must understand the contributions of vision, language, and motor faculties.
1. The Brain
Using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Positron Emission Tomography, researchers can determine which brain areas show increased energy consumption as you think various sorts of thoughts. If you throw a ball, your cerebellum lights up. If you watch the ball fly, your occipital lobe lights up. And if you hear the ball land, your temporal lobe lights up.
Nothing in those observations surprises. All are in accordance with classical theories of brain function. You hit perceptual apparatus with stimuli, and peripheral parts of your brain process information.
Remarkably, however, those same peripheral parts of your brain can light up without the benefit of perceptual stimulation. For example, if you close your eyes, and someone asks you to think about an alphabet, your occipital lobe lights up in a way reminiscent of what happens when you look at an alphabet. And if someone asks you to think of a verb that goes with the noun hammer, and you think of pound, several parts of your brain associated with language understanding light up, as well as the the right side of your cerebellum - that part of your brain that sits on top of your spinal cord supposed to be for fine motor control. What is it doing lighting up during what might seem to be a task for the language faculty alone? It does.
Vision, language, and motor areas are involved in "thinking".
2. Neuroanatomy
There is a large number of fibers projecting toward the peripheral parts of the brain that deals with vision, language and motor faculties. There are so many such fibers, that peripheral brain is not only heavily used in perception, but also heavily reused in "thinking".
3. Visual Problem Solving
Ask a small child to add 2 and 2; s/he will convert problem into a visual finger-counting exercise. Ask an adult to name the 10th letter in the alphabet; s/he will hold up her hand and start counting, just as if s/he were a child adding. Ask a physics student to solve a problem; s/he will draw a diagram.
Vision makes it possible to solve problems that would otherwise be difficult or impossible. To be able to understand how brain thinks we need to understand how it sees. Isn't it?
4. Linguistic Problem Solving
My son, quiet frustratingly, once asked me: "Dad, do you know when I share some thoughts you always end up with something else that I never thought of or meant?" My colleages have a similar frustration: "Urvesh, you have sorted everything in your mind. Why go through this facade of brainstorming?" I insist: "I develop all my ideas after listening to you." And, they always counter with disbelief: "Urvesh, we never told you what you concluded."
There is an inner conversation all (?) people have when they solve problems - and, that plays the same role as a conversation with someone else. Processing thoughts expressed as word sequences excites important thinking mechanisms buried in our language-processing hardware.
I/O channels provide foundation for understanding intelligence