Posts Tagged ‘muscles’

How to Create the Perfect Need-Machine by Analyzing Personal Activity Patterns

Wednesday, March 26th, 2008

In the approach of Taylor and Ford, the employees and customers are treated as programmable machines.  The focus was on a perfect coordination of the senses, the muscles and the production system (the assembly line).  The emotions and the imagination were neglected.

In mass customization, the emotions are involved. In customer innovation, the imagination is imperative. In a demand oriented system all the parts of the human cognitive system have to play a role in a coherent and balanced way.

The human body acts on its environment with messages and action-patterns. The incoming and outgoing messages are observed by the senses and transformed to an internal format. The internal communication system sends the messages to the appropriate place in the body. The emotions are always looking for danger. They want to control the priority of the actions to make it possible for the body to react immediately. The imagination creates an image of the outside world and helps the body to generate scenario’s to improve its action-patterns. 

The senses are the connection to the physical outside world. They shield the human being from the enormous amount of signals that are trying to enter the body. They filter incoming data and transform the data in a standard internal format. When the senses detect an event, it is evaluated by the emotions. If the event is not important, nothing happens. It the event is unusual it becomes aware in the conscious. Events that are highly repeating are not noticed after some time. An internal program (an action-pattern) automates the handling of the event.

The muscles act in physical space. They acquire an enormous amount of reaction-patterns by repeated practicing. Humans learn from their failures. When the senses detect an event, many appropriate patterns are located and enabled. 

When the patterns enter mental space, they change into models. Complicated patterns are compressed into models. Humans use all kinds of compression techniques to make the world compact and therefore more understandable. Static models (e.g. an organization contains employees) compress the world in wholes (nouns) and parts (attributes). They create identities. Dynamic models (the employee sells a product) compress causal chains (event, actor, result). They make it possible to reason.

Models behave the same way as sensors do in physical space. They shield the mental space of the human being from the enormous amount of ideas that the imagination is producing.

The emotions act on hostile and friendly forces. They shield the body from physical injuries (avoiding pain) and take care of the self re-production process of the body (looking for food and a sexual partner).

The emotional system determines the amount of resources that is allocated to the evaluation and the search for adequate action patterns. If an event is dangerous, all resources in the body are used. The body reacts without thinking and uses a biological inherited and fast pattern (fight, flight, freeze, the primary emotions). If there is enough time to react, the emotional system evaluates its preferences and enables the preferred actions-patterns.

If the preferences are related to a long-term perspective, they enter mental space and the human has a choice to make. In the evaluation of long-term preferences, the other plays an important role. People want to take care of the other (family, friends, children), are afraid to get in to a conflict (dominance, status) and want to be praised by the other for what they are accomplishing.

Humans imagine (by creating pictures connected with feelings) what events they like to happen (a wish). When they are pessimistic, they imagine what events they do not want to happen (a fear).  The imagination is the innovative part of the human mental space that generates all kinds of new connections (ideas). The imagination is also the most free to play with new ideas. People can simulate and practice in their imagination without getting into trouble. The imagination produces the idea of the identity.

The imagination uses visual metaphors to create an understandable world. On the lowest level the metaphors are connect to the action patterns. The image of a cup is connected to picking up the cup, holding the cup and moving the cup. New structures are blended with old familiar structures.

Many metaphors make use of the human understanding of technology.  Freud based his theory of the unconsciousness on his understanding of the steam-machine (“I am steamed up with emotions”). Many theories of the mind are based on the metaphor of the computer. People always relate new phenomena to something they already understand. They sometimes do this (in the eyes of others) in very strange ways.  A skilful teacher knows this and tries to find the bridge (the right metaphor, a story) between his world and the world of the student.

In the human body, all the sub-systems (e.g. the services, the organs) are connected by shared communication-channels. There are fast (the nervous system) and slow reacting shared channels (the endocrine system). All the sub-systems use specific messenger-molecules to communicate their actions and act on incoming messengers.  Messengers materialize with every thought we create and with every emotion we feel. When a messenger enters the boundary of a sub-system, (e.g. a cell) it triggers messengers that are specific for that sub-system.

The action patterns make the muscles move according to a movements-plan that is stored in memory. The movement-plans of the muscles enable people to walk, to work (using tools) and to talk. In this last case, people communicate their intentions. The human communication contains a complicated mix of signals that are related to the emotions (e.g. visual expressions, gestures), the patterns (assertions) and the imagination (visual images, ideas).

People resist change. The patterns they have acquired control their behavior and determine their potential. People do not want to change their patterns dramatically. They want to acquire new patterns (by doing) without noticing the change. Only a major event (a critical moment), mostly with negative impact, can have a radical effect. If this event happens it takes a very long time to recover and get into harmony again. When people have to adjust their patterns too often, they experience stress and on the long run get sick.

If people cannot adjust their patterns, they have to involve the other parts of the cognitive system. When they involve the emotions, they have to set priorities and make a choice. People do not like making choices. They are incapable of evaluating all the possibilities. They can also make use of the senses and look at the real opportunities in the outside world. People are almost incapable of doing this because their imagination produces the images it wants to see. If the imagination really faces the facts, the identity is attacked. It feels powerless and unable to control his path of destiny. The last possibility a human has is to adjust the imagination. He has to realize that the possibilities he imagined were just illusions.

If everything stays the same, people get bored. They hope that an event will occur that relates to their wishes. People are the most satisfied if their environment produces just enough change (a challenge) they can cope with. They want a balance between the will (what they want, the imagination, variation) and their capabilities (what they are able to do, predictability, the patterns, their skills).

In a perfect demand oriented economy, a supplier has to provide a challenge to the customer. To provide this challenge the supplier has to understand the wishes and the fears (the imagination) of the customer, his behavior (the patterns) and the balance between the two parts. If the customer is out of balance the supplier has to help the customer to acquire new patterns (learning), help him to make a choice (advice) or show him the real opportunities (scenario’s) taking care of the customers identity.  

It is very difficult for a supplier to get accurate information. Most people are unable to make their behavioral patterns conscious. When people are asked about their opinion (an aspect of the emotions), they often do not want to offend the other and give proper answers. People only want to share their most secret wishes with people they trust (partner, family, friends). Correct information about the customer can only be acquired by carefully observing and analyzing the activities of the customer (what he is doing).  It is completely impossible for a company to observe the activities of all their customers. The only one who can do this is the customer himself.

Customers can observe their activities if they were able to gather personal activity-patterns, get the opportunity to analyze their behavior, and share their activity-patterns with others to get an advice. Most of the needed data is somewhere already available (patient records, buying behavior, payments etc) or can be made available by making connections to the tools the consumer is using in his personal- and work-environment (Emails, Content). The only thing that has to happen is that companies and government agencies make these patterns, which are most of the time privately owned by the customer, available.

It can be envisioned that all personal data is kept in a private space. Only the customer (the owner) can make the data available to others. This approach would prevent many problems in the current situation (e.g. spam).

The last step in a perfect rational demand oriented system is reached when the personal activity-patterns are automatically transformed in standardized need-messages that are sent out to appropriate providers.

Thinking with our Muscles: About Mirrors, Spindles and Acrobats

Sunday, November 11th, 2007

bacteriumIn 2002 Will McWhinney was writing his never finished book Grammers of Engagement“.

One of the scientists he was communicating with was Rodney Michael John Cotterill (1933-2007).

Will send me an article of John Cotterill called “Cooperation of the basal ganglia, cerebellum, sensory cerebrum and hippocampus: possible implications for cognition, consciousness, intelligence and creativity” .

The article contains a systematic exploration of the Sensory-Motor System of all the organisms on earth noting that the underlying behavioral strategy of Earth’s creatures does not appear to have changed in the four billion or so years since they sprang from their last common ancestor.

In the body the motor output is supported by the underlying anatomy. The various signaling routes appear to converge on the frontal lobe’s movement-mediating areas, that is to say the primary motor cortex (M1), the premotor and supplementary motor cortices, and the prefrontal cortex (PFC).

The anatomical details show that the three main movement-provoking streams in higher animals function cooperatively. When the cooperative mechanism is working at full strength the result is overt movement.

The article shows what part of the system was added at what moment and what the effect was of this addition. Strangely enough Cotterill comes to the conclusion that we THINK with the SPINDLES in our MUSCLES.

Muscle spindles are found within the fleshy portions of muscles, embedded in so-called Intrafusal fibers. These fibers are walled off from the rest of the muscle by a collagen sheath. This sheath has a spindle shape. While the intrafusal fibers are wrapped with sensory receptors, their counterpart, are responsible for the power-generating component of muscle and are innervated by motor neurons.

In another Blog I already showed that the Collagen Fibers in our Body are exactly mapped on the Meridians that are used in Acupuncture.

The article of Cotterill is very difficult to read if you don’t know anything about the terminology of the Brain but the Schema’s (The Wiring) in the article are very convincing.

This is what Will wrote: “Rodney Cotterill (2001) presented an important integration of the research on the brain structure. His neuro-physiological work radically undermines any support remaining for the stimulus-response schema, replacing it with motor-environment-mind schemata of complex feedback loops. The complex of feedback loops enables one to “Know what one knows.”

Cotterill goes beyond this, writing: “The ability to know that one knows is referred to by psychologists as first-order embedding. Higher embedding, such as that exemplified by knowing that one knows that one knows, merely depends on the ability to hold things in separate patches of neuronal activity in working memory. This manifests itself in the creature’s intelligence, which also dictates its ability to consolidate existing schemata into new schema.” “This ability, labeled intelligence, is a unique feature of mammalian brains. Intelligence and reflection are explained as due to functioning of the web of feedback loops, both internal and external, that evolved in higher animals“.

What Will is explaining is that the connection between all the spindles in our muscles is a very complex feed-back system. This feed-back system is able to create higher levels of “Abstraction” by the use of “Self-Reference”.

The experience in our body is stored in Schema (Action Patterns). “A schema is a reproducible linking of motor-directing actitity to the optimal environmental feedback resulting from that activity, the reproducibility stemming from the fact that schemata are laid down in the available form of memory“.

The schema are learned by Copying the Behavior of Others. We are not only copying we are Mirroring the Other. This is exactly what people in NLP call Pacing & Leading.

Recent advances in the cognitive neuroscience of action have considerably enlarged our understanding of human motor cognition. In particular, the activity of the mirror system, first discovered in the brain of non-human primates, provides an observer with the understanding of a perceived action by means of the motor simulation of the agent’s observed movements.

This discovery has raised the prospects of a “motor theory of social cognition“. Human social cognition includes the ability to mindread, which in turn plays a crucial role in human communication.

Again a citation of Will McWhinney:

Pacing develops through a harmonizing across the spectrum of enunciations and responses. In human communication, rhythm orchestrates the voices, expressions, e.g., sentences, reception processes, rhythms of the body, demands for attention within and among the participants, and long waves of cultural accommodation across the whole set of conversants.  A conversation is effective when the pacing of each element synchronizes with the others: all the phonemes of a word need to be completely expressed before a speaker begins to generate the next word.  Interruptions in this flow produce stuttering, in speech or thought. The breathing must enable a sentence to be phrased, expressed on a single breath or broken in relation to its grammatical structure. The listeners simultaneously construct the sentences in their own neuro-muscular structure“.

When we are Unable to Mirror we are “Out of Tune” and the dialogue stops. Mirroring forms the basis for Empathy and Language. It is also the main reason why Autists have a difficulty to communicate.

I end this blog with a citation of Ritchie produced in 1936:

At the suggestion that muscular movement may be intellectual I feel that there will be a stirring of indignation among the highbrows. They will say, “Why all these talk about acrobats and muscular activity? Granted that what the acrobat does is perfect of its kind it is not properly an intellectual activity, like the mathematician’s for instance”. In reply to this I should admit at once that what the mathematician does is much more useful than what the acrobat does; but is there any reason apart from snobbery for saying it is more intellectual? In effect the acrobat thinks with the muscles of his whole body while the mathematician thinks with – well, whatever it is he thinks with. Of course it may be that the mathematician does not think with anything but just thinks. Even if this were true, which is doubtful, I find it hard to see why thinking with nothing should be more truly thinking than thinking with your muscles. Because thinking is mental it does not follow that it is not bodily too“.

Cognitive Scientists like Lackoff, Nunez and Dehaene have found an explanation for the “Thinking of the Mathematican“. They are able to mirror, to entrain, to tune, to pace, to synchronize to the “Actions Patterns of the Conscious Universe“.

These Actions Patterns have a lot in common with Music and Harmony. Pythagoras was not the only one who talked about the Music of the Spheres. It also explains why Mathematicians are always (like me) in Love with Music.

LINKS

About Mirroring

About the Emotions of Bacteria

About the Evolution of the Mammals

About the Tetraktys of Pythagoras