On the other hand, imagination can, in a sense, be seen as a form of action too.

Motor movement is so very much integrated with perception, that imagining motor action on the sensory side of neural network helps to coordinate this motor action.

The integration of motor and sensory neural networks also works the other way round. For instance, as a violin-player, when I want to read music, it helps me a lot to move my bowing arm as if playing.

The simple – or over-simplified – idea is this. On the perceptive side of a neural network we connect our senses to the constructing neural network, while the deconstructing neural network is not connected to anything, but it is needed for mirroring and immanization. On the motor side it is exactly the other way round. Here we connect, so to say, our muscles to the constructing neural network, while the deconstructing neural network is (probably) not connected to anything. The latter might, however, be connected to feedback proprioceptors from muscles.

What is important with regard to the movement of our body is a continuing plan of attention. Perception is largely triggered and regulated from outside of us, and by instinct – this certainly holds for non-humans. If the source of our actions can be very directly connected to our perception, then we do not need a plan. In its simplest form such an action, for instance, is a reflex regulated through our spinal cord. For things like building a nest we need something like a planning mechanism, or a special instinct.

Before delving into this it is, I think, important to understand a little more of the anatomy of our brains.

This control starts with simple reflexes in the spinal cord.[^]

[^]Guyton, Arthur C. 1981 [1956]. Textbook of Medical Physiology. Sixth edition. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company.

Gerard J. Tortora. 1980. Principles of Human Anatomy. New York: Harper & Row.

In the brain stem we next find the medulla oblongata, the pons varolii, and the midbrain or mesencephalon. In this area is also located the reticular formation, which has an important influence on consciousness and arousal. Further more, most sensory information goes through these structures too.

The medulla consists of many nuclei. They take care of simple antagonist movements, such as moving one joint of an arm up and down. Other nuclei regulate things like our heartbeat, breathing, the dilatation of our blood vessels, sneezing, hiccuping, coughing, vomiting, and so on.

One step higher the pons varolii regulates swallowing, chewing, some eyeball-movements, taste, facial expression, salivation, and more.

Above this the midbrain regulates the movement of our eyes and head based on visual or auditory information.

Many nuclei in the brainstem which regulate motor actions receive sensory information. At the lowest level this is mainly information which relates directly to the muscles which are regulated, such as muscle tension. In the midbrain information from our eyes and ears is taken into account too.

In the middle of our brains we find the thalamus. The thalamus is the principal relay station of our brains. Certainly for sensory impulses it also does a lot of interpretation. All these sensory impulses reach the thalamus through all lower brain structures mentioned earlier. Interpretation and ‘conscious’ recognition of pain and temperature is though to take place in the thalamus. It probably also contains a kind of focusing mechanism for our vision.

Again higher we find the basal ganglia, also named the cerebral nuclei. It consists mainly of the corpus striatum. The striatum itself is divided into the lentiform nucleus and the caudate nucleus. The lentiform nucleus is again subdivided into the corpus putamen, and the globus pallidus. Lateral to the putamen we find the claustrum. All these neural formations are heavily interconnected with each other, with the thalamus, and with the cerebral cortex. The basal ganglia control large unconscious movements, like swinging arms while walking, and also walking itself. With many animals one might not immediately notice it if they would not have a cerebral cortex! In birds their cerebral cortex is hardly developed. Voluntary motor functions in birds stem from their well developed basal ganglia. Next to this the basal ganglia – probably the pallidus – also regulate muscle tone – if one plans to do something, then the right muscles need to be stimulated a little before actual use.

At the tails of the caudate nuclei we find the amygdaloid nuclei. The hippocampus, amygdaloid nuclei, and parts of the thalamus and hypothalamus together form the limbic system. The limbic system regulates emotion, survival, and our memory. It is responsible for all kinds of involuntary movement, and complex emotional behavior such as rage. The amygdaloid nuclei play an important role in aggression and sexuality. My personal guess is that the hippocampus plays an important role with regard to the attention mechanism.

The cerebellum is connected to each of the three parts of the brain stem as mentioned above. It is also rather directly coupled to our cerebrum. The cerebellum takes care of what is sometimes named ‘subconscious’ movements of skeletal muscles. Important are coordination, maintenance of posture, and balance. Important herein is proprioception. That is our sense of position of our body parts relative to each other. From this the cerebellum makes decisions on muscle contractions with regard to desired movement. The result is smooth, coordinated movement. With regard to balancing our body there are direct connections from the balancing-organ in our inner ear to our cerebellum.

From the above we may conclude that the neural network of the cerebrum, to which I try to confine myself, has, in daily practice, little to do with how our muscles do something with our body. We even see that the phylogenetically older parts of our brain can – not surprisingly, since reptiles have no more – more or less let us live by themselves, and that the cerebrum is just one more, regulating layer. As regulating layer, however, it can instruct, and with regard to the cerebellum also teach, lower level neural structures, that is we can train ourselves. Teaching is probably very limited. The cerebellum takes care of precise adjustment of movements. I don’t think our basal ganglia have learning abilities. Maybe it is different in birds? In essence, all that these lower brain structures do is built-in from birth. There may be crude forms of adaptation, but nothing which I have to take into account here. What is important to me is that this apparatus can already do so very much automatically. This means that the neural machinery which I am most interested in does not start of with nothing. To the contrary!

It probably indeed works much like this, but I am sure evolution will have made adaptations especially for this purpose. Earlier (page 104) I spoke of background knowledge and background activation. There I proposed in a very general sense how in a sufficiently immanent neural network a specific, small, ‘background’ activation of immanent neurons may lead to a kind of background knowledge from which I, for instance, may know, and take into account, where I am even when I do not really attend to it. One could implement this locally, by letting neurons stay sensitive for a prolonged time, but maybe the lower brains play an important part here. About this too I think differently in 2021.

In scientific literature planning is often associated with the prefrontal cortex of the cerebrum. The prefrontal cortex has many connections with the basal ganglia. More direct connections from cortical neurons to the spinal cord stem from adjacent cortical area’s in the precentral gyrus.

My guess is, that parts of the basal ganglia, or another neural structure lower in the brains, generate a kind of background activation, just like the programming mechanism does, but then stimulating much more neurons just a little bit at the same time but/or stimulating only a few the most. I think it does the smaller stimulating chattered all over the cerebrum, but with very little density – this is hard to tell form speculation alone, since one could think of many other mechanisms – except in the prefrontal cortex, where the density of such background activation is high. The algorithm will likely be rather different, from that of the programming mechanism. How can background activation imply planning? Well, because in this immanized neural network, it is plans which are being activated. Now, in 2021, I have a more simple theory; neural networks that can process time are ‘naturally’ good in predicting what happens next, especially, of course, regarding one’s own actions:-). The planning which we as humans tend to think of first, is planning from within language. This is entirely different from such planning.

Secondly, I think there is a kind of stabilization mechanism, probably part of the reticular system, which makes sure that the activation caused by this planning, background activation mechanism, is in accord with general neural activation on the sensory side of the neural network. This works two ways. When we use our body our alertness rises, and when we are alert we tend to ‘wake up’ and act. This helps to make sure that the neural network on the motor-side will ‘want’ to do about the same thing as the perception halve of the network. They will ‘want’ the same thing because the stabilization mechanism makes sure that they are not independent from each other.

Thirdly, given the above, the main idea with regard to movement is, that we need sufficient background activation within the frontal, motor cortex, plus an image, that is a prediction, of what we want to do, in the top of the sensory side of the neural network. That is enough to set things of.

To me it is an interesting thought how much I could ‘program’ my motor neural network by deliberately not acting, and yet stimulating my attention through means of inner speech, which is a possibility in humans. What would be the consequences of this? It is something which a lot of intelligent people, and also physically handicapped people, have to deal with. In intelligent people this might lead to a kind of clumsiness which might be prevented by doing more things with their bodies. For physically handicapped people this itself is actually only an issue for the parts of their bodies which they still can use, but they do might have a problem with the lack of motor input to their sensory system.

I sometimes think of the neural network as being split four-double; first in a sensory and a motor halve, and then each of these again in a constructing and a deconstructing halve. Maybe this is ontogenetically indeed the case, even though they lie apart in adults?

This immanization has at first little to do with what a young individual does – the immanization will, further more, also not entail much in a very young child. It is only through the child, or a young animal, actually doing things, that what is perceived comes to be connected with what one does. Reciprocally this also influences the immanization on the sensory side – so I assume there to be feedback connections. What is important is that the child does things.

Further more, it will help if a child sees adult people who already can do numerous things, because through immanization of what it sees, it can also learn to coordinate its motor activities. It helps even more when these adults adjust their behavior such that children will understand it more easily, and this is something we almost automatically do, maybe from memory of our own youth, maybe it is in-born, maybe we ourselves automatically adapt to the child, or maybe the child makes us adapt to them, or maybe it is a bit of all of these? This is in conformity with Sigmund Freud’s ideas on primordial narcissism. If all goes well, at the age of five, the child goes through the Oedipus complex, where it discovers its own identity, and where it should loose much of its primordial narcissism – but this is something which often fails. Freud is famous for his theory on sexual development, but his theory on narcissistic development is, in my opinion, of much greater importance, at least in this age.

The specialty in this ‘neural circuit’ is that muscles, and lower level neural formations, can hardly learn and adapt themselves. We sometimes can adapt our environment. Children will especially try to adapt their parents, and they will have to give in enough for the child to stabilize. While all knowledge is transcendent the neural network will have to do this adaptation through trial and error alone. Later it can make estimated guesses, and take into account dangers, and so on. The older we get, the less we dare.

On the other hand, imagination itself can, also in the perceptual neural network, be seen as a kind of action too. Since there are no muscles attached to this imagining there are no consequences in the outer world.

I want to explain how background activation of the prefrontal cortex can lead to certain behavior. For this, let us imagine that we have the same background activation apparatus on the sensory side. As such, when I, for example, want to make myself a cup of coffee, then this idea is ‘turned on’ and it will stay on. This leads to making me stand up. So the standing up becomes activated. As soon as I succeed it may shut of again. Then walking starts, and so on.

As we see, what is important is that we can switch things on and off dynamically, and intelligibly. This aspect works very much the same as with our programming mechanism. It requires massive, temporal, feedback, neural connections. Probably the basal ganglia take care of this.