Re: planets

Nik Taylor wrote:

> There's no form of memory in muscles.  Near the base of our spine there
> is, I believe, a sort of "pseudo-brain" that co-ordinates various
> instinctive reactions (like the knee-jerk reaction).  But that's a
> matter of distance, it's too far for the signal to travel to the brain,
> register, send a command back, and carry it out.
Actually, Nik, processing of signals -- and therefore, interpretation
of reality -- begins at the nerve ends and happens all the way up into
the brain.  And information is passed *in equal amounts in both
directions* all the way to the nerve ends -- your nerves are telling
your fingertips what to feel for and your eye what to look for based
on what you expect, just as much as they are telling your brain what
was actually felt and seen.

I don't know if on that basis you could say that "muscles have
memory," but memory is (at least physically) changes in synapse
connection strength, and those changes happen all the way down the
nerve.

There's *definitely* more going on than just reflex loops in our
nervous systems outside the brain.  Indeed, it would be more accurate
to look at our nervous systems as a whole as the physical seat of our
minds, rather than thinking of our minds as situated in our brains and
communicating with the rest of the body by means of the nerves.

Source: _Wet Mind_ by Kosslyn and Koenig and various works by Robert
Ornstein.

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