Mr.Botboard said:

> Lower animals have essentially "no" stored memories, but simply
     > process input in realtime, in the limited way allowable by their
     > limited neuroanatomy. They simply react and react and react, with
     > very little "comparison" or "reflection" to past activities taking
     > place. Some animals do have "limited" learning abilities, and in
     > those cases there is some comparison, and the amount is probably
     > graded in relation to where the animal is in the animal hierarchy.


and I said....

> >> ===============
>
> >Here I would disagree.  I have in my kitchen a water snail, been around
> for over a year, who has learned to distinguish me from others in the
> house and beg for food.
> ............
>
>  They lack the large parallel sensory
> >> bandwidth, as well as the large central store of past memories, as
> >> well as the ability to manipulate and compare same, and take
> >> successful actions. With them it is more a sense-react hardwired
> >> pathway. Apparently, all 3 capabilities develop roughly in parallel
> >> as you go up the ladder in the animal kingdom.
> >> ========
>
> >Well, my snail appears to have stored memories, and  the ability to
> manipulate me into giving it food.  This behaviour was learned, it
> is definitely not hardwired.
> .........
> It clearly uses multimodal sensory inputs, and has available a number
> of malleable behavioural options.  The sense-react pathways do not
> appear much different from my learning how to work the wipers on a
> rental car.  I dont really see much difference except in scale.
> .............
>   In other words, we have a greater capacity to learn and create
> new responses than the competition.
> >
>
>
> Dear E/L,
>
> I don't think you have said anything here counter to what I said
> previously.


au contraire, Mr Botboard,

I believe what Russ, Jinx and I are telling you is that these creatures DO appear to have memories and Do rememember things and people, and act on this knowledge.  Here is a proposed mechanism:

The brainstem of a creature controls autonomic functions, for example breathing, heartbeat, etc, and also is the location of the limbic system, which is the seat of emotion.  Now an emotional response to something need not be complex, just a fear hormone, adrenalin or analog, and a happy hormone, serotonin or analog.  These allow a neuron, or bit, to be set under a certain set of circumstances.  If a certain dark loomy shape is associated with crumbs, happy bit is set.  More happy, stronger response. See loomy shape, happy, come over.  Likewise, light loomy shape hits creature, fear bit set, see light loomy shape, flee.

Snail episode:  Snail sees dark loomy shape, happy bit set, starts coming up to surface.  But, Snail was left with strangers for 2 weeks, and becomes hypervigilant for dark loomy shape.  Snail overreacts to dark loomy shape, and as a result overshoots top of water and comes up out of tank.

This demonstrates a perfectly sound reason to have an emotion bit set, since it tends to reinforce a behaviour that was rewarded in the past, and allows for a gradation in response.  An overall increase in a seeking activity when a reward is delayed would be a good thing, and should only be allowed to be overwritten (forget) with difficulty.  This, by the way, is a classic 'training' response.  This is not consistent with the idea that these creatures dont have memory, and shows that, to the contrary, even in tiny creatures, emotion-based memory is desirable and highly useful.

alice
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