Hylozoism vs. Long Term Potentiation (Part 1 of two mailed parts):

[Administrador del Nodo]

>From Postmaster Sat, 4 Nov 95 17:48:02 ARG remote from neubio
>Received: by neubio.sld.ar (UUPC/PcCorreo 3.0) with UUCP; Sat, 4 Nov 95 17:48:02 ARG
>Date: Sat, 4 Nov 95  17:48:02 ARG
>From: Administrador del Nodo <Postmaster at neubio.sld.ar>
>Message-ID: <634jz442 at neubio.sld.ar>
>X-Mailer: UUPC/PcCorreo 3.0
>To: neuroscience at net.bio.net
>Subject: Hylozoism vs. Long Term Potentiation (Part 1 of two mailed parts): 
>
>
>
>
>Hello, all!
>
>Regarding my previous writing (Prof. Mariela Szirko, 
><postmaster at neubio.sld.ar> and <postmaster at neubio.gov.ar>, 
>where I commented:
>
>>In our own tradition we are hylozoist and so see no need 
>>of searching for engrams; least to use these constructs as 
>>Procrustean beds to provide function onto any experimental fact 
>>that admits to be interpreted as bolstering LTP.  
>
>John E. Anderson, Ph.D. <janderlu at msn.com>, 
><jander at unf6.cis.unf.edu>,  wondered on 2 Nov 1995:
>    
>> What do you mean? 
>
>By way of a clear if not succint response I should provide 
>the following notice (that I forward into two parts because
>my e-mail hylozoistically resisted to send it complete):
>
>1. (Our local bias towards electrobiological phenomena in psy-
>chogenesis.) Through a series of historical contingencies, our 
>neurobiological tradition worked with exceedingly scarce com-
>munication towards the foreign. A friend of Thomas Young and 
>Michael Faraday, namely Octavio Fabrizio Mossotti, re-ignited 
>locally in the 1820s and 1830s the interest in the electrical 
>state inside the physical masses, formerly stirred here by sev-
>eral local theses (on electric fishes and bioelectricity) for-
>warded late in the XVIII century. Mossotti's influence expanded 
>well outside his Chair of Experimental Physics at the University 
>of Buenos Aires and, in the ensuing fifty years, created an 
>special atmosphere permitting since 1879 the work on brain 
>electrostimulation of Richard Sudnik, a former co-founder in 
>Paris of the Intl. Society of Electricity and later another full 
>professor in our same University. The outcome was the 
>worldwide-first prolonged electrostimulation and brain mapping 
>of a conscious human brain, performed (during some eight 
>months!) since the 15 September 1883 on a luetic osteitis pa-
>tient (the top of whose skull was blown out by the syphilis) by 
>Dr. Alberto Alberti, an eminent inmigrant from Trento and later 
>first medical director of the Italian Hospital in Buenos Aires. 
>Sorrily this important contribution was appropriated by a pla-
>giarist - who, nevertheless, published here the Nissl procedure 
>before Nissl did in Germany. The plagiarist obtained an unlaw-
>ful doctorate of the University with said electrostimulation in 
>1885 and this silenced most of the local work in the field for 
>many years.  Alberti's contribution was repossessed only in 
>1909, when Prof. Cushing synthesized and augmented a long 
>series of brain electrostimulations done in the foreign over 
>much smaller areas,though however Prof. Sudnik and others 
>continued, interim, the local experimental work.  All this estab-
>lished a heavy local bias regarding electrobiological phenom-
>ena in the understanding of psychogenesis.
>
>2. (Chr. Jakob depiction, of interfering reverberating circuits in 
>brain psychogenetic processes, required to abandon the Py-
>thagoric-Parmenidean exogenism.) In such athmosphere, in 
>1899 Prof. Christfried Jakob arrived from Erlangen.(Some of 
>his early books you might find in your local libraries.)  Since 
>1906 he forwarded an elaboration of his previous European 
>views; I feel sure that this elaboration was locally elicited by the 
>special atmosphere I just described. The psychogenetic proc-
>ess was described by Prof. Jakob as the formation, by interfer-
>ing reverberating circuits, of atomic-like stationarities apt to be 
>linked among themselves in a molecular guise. Exceedingly 
>few persons understood, at that time, Jakob's publications in 
>Spanish. It was of no help, the intrinsic difficulty to grasp how 
>an interference (spatial or of echoes) could define structures 
>able to interact systemically. This was by no means the unique 
>flaw in communication of our tradition; among many others, 
>Jakob published in 1911 the description of what in the foreign 
>is called the "Papez" circuit from Papez account of 1937. And 
>for a blunt, unforeseen intervention, see in Behavioral & Brain 
>Sciences 11, p. 95, 1988, F. J. Irsigler's rejoinder upon the 
>hemispheric rotation around the sylvian pivot (Chr. Jakob: Von 
>Tierhirn zum Menschenhirn, Lehmann, Munchen, also 1911) of 
>a spacetime morphogenetic dislocation between cortices 
>whose different rates and modes of differentiation found spe-
>cies-typical (innate) behaviour, in the words of Sperry (1983) 
>'largely preorganized independently of sensory input". But the 
>crucial point was the nature of the natural force in which the 
>"molecular" system of those stationarities would relax.  After 
>some time adhering, just as Karl Kleist,the psychophysical 
>parallelism upon the influence of Th. Ziehen, it was manifest to 
>our school the need of embracing hylozoism and gathering 
>data to provide a physical description of such a force. Already 
>in 1910, in a Panamerican scientific congress in Buenos Aires, 
>the reproach was forwarded to  Prof. Jakob that, if such a 
>problem remained unresolved, just only the short term memory 
>would be accounted for by the "functional remanence" of such 
>a system of electromagnetically-linked stationarities defined by 
>reverberations' interference. (Engrams replace the bare self-
>reproducing remanence every time that interactivity is denied.)
>
>             (This mail continues in a second part of like length)
>

       =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
       Prof. Mariela Szirko,
       <postmaster at neubio.sld.ar> 
                            
       Centro de Investig. Neurobiologicas, Ministry
       of Health & Welfare, Argentine Republic; and Lab. of
       Electroneurobiological Res., Hospital "Dr. Jose Tiburcio Borda", 
       Municipality of Buenos Aires,
       Office:  Phone/Fax (54 1) 306 -7314
                e-mail <postmaster at neubio.gov.ar>
       Standard disclaimer: Las opiniones de este mensaje son personales 
      y no comprometen las dependencias a cargo de la firmante.
  Reply to THIS message,  ONLY to: <postmaster at neubio.sld.ar> 
  =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=