I'm a Newbie here. I consider myself both a neuroscientist (Cognitive Effects of Early Brain Injury: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994) and a writer (see my website: Southern California Mysteries at www.caseydorman.com). I have just completed a new, as yet unpublished novel that focuses on the nature of consciousness, which I imply is a combination of an inner voice that describes our actions and decisions in the form of a narrative, plus the immediate awareness created by our sensory neural connections (a la Damasio). Anybody interested in how this can be explained using the form of a novel in which a computer program takes over the brain of a person who has suffered brain death and turns that person into an international assassin, can look on my website at the novel,"I Carlos." I'd be happy to send the manuscript to anyone who is interested. It may sound kooky, but the science and philosophy behind the ideas in the novel are pretty much mainstream in the neuroscience/consciousness fields. I'd love to get feedback.

WOW, sounds interesting! That would make a good sci-fi movie, I do believe!

Hope to see more of you at Mind-Brain!

Love,
Dara

Welcome to Mind-brain! It seems you have some very interesting ideas to share! I look forward to all you have to offer here! Enjoy your stay here at Mind-brain


Love ya,
Chrissy

Hi cadorman,

First of all, welcome to Mind-Brain!

I would dearly love to receive a copy of your manuscript, since I have always been a sci-fi fan, though I don't read much fiction these days. I always loved those stories that held, just that smattering of 'this could happen in reality'.
I am also interested in the nature of conciousness so your tale should be a winner for me.
I will post you my e-mail address by IM in the hope that  you will send me a copy. I promise to give you a realistic response of the effect it has on me, and not to give anyone else sight of your work, lest it affect your potential booksales!
Do enjoy yourself here, it should be interesting to see your ideas [knowledge] posted on the conciousness board, either as replies to existing topics, or as new topics to give us all new insights or thoughts to consider and knock around.

Best regards, Bill.

Hi cadorman,

Many thanks for giving me the opportunity to read your story.
I am up to chapter 6 now, and thoroughly enjoying it!

I have found what may be one or two typo's so will send the file back with highlights for you to check my checking. My spell-check and grammar util in MS Word is playing up at the moment, so I have to rely on my built-in dictionary [implant?].
Bye for now, and congratulations so far!
Bill.

Thanks, Bill: Glad to hear you're enjoying I, Carlos and i'm genuinely appreciative of your taking the time to read it. I'm continually re-writing and I am including a mofication made to the technical description of neurostories given by Dr. Curtin. I was emboldened by Michael Chricton's willingness to go into technical detail in "Prey" so I added a bit on emergent behavior - a subject that ought to be dear to the heart of most mind-brain students. Here is the addition below (by the way, I first used American baseball as an analogy but the rules of baseball are so arcane that, in fact, they would never emerge in a program that learned. Soccer is more straight-forward. It is possible, using parallel distributed processing systems to develop apparently rule-governed behavior by simple learning, but not of the type seen in baseball. Soccer is a better example):

“You mean running a movie inside someone’s head,� Rafael said. His face indicated that he wasn’t impressed.
“It’s more than just putting a movie in someone’s head. That was the easy part. The programming in neurostories – the part that makes them seem real – allows for ‘emergent behavior patterns.’�
     Nyles’ look was blank and Rafael snorted in disgust.
     â€œEmergent behaviors are those that were never put in the program in the first place. They develop from the feedback the program gets from the person’s experiences. Let me give you an example: Suppose the program has instructions for kicking a soccer ball between a set of goal posts. The goal is set – get the ball between the posts. The behaviors consist of a set of body movements –each one a discrete movement – foot movements, knee movements, hip movements, torso movements, head movements. Using the goal of getting closer and closer to the target – putting the ball between the posts- the discrete movements are orchestrated into one continuous behavior that resembles a soccer player kicking a ball. Which discrete movements are chosen by the computer to compose the larger action are determined by which ones are successful. The final product was never programmed as a single behavior until it ‘emerged’ in the learning process. Now it is a behavior that can be combined with others. Eventually the computer may be able to move the ball down the field, use headers as well as kicks, even though none of the macro-behaviors that make up playing soccer was ever programmed in the first place. If you add other players and the goal remains the same, gradually the players will learn teamwork. You’ll have a whole soccer game  without any specific instructions ever written on how to play it. The game would just emerge from the initial primitive behaviors and the goal.â€�  She looked back and forth between the two detectives.
Even Rafael’s face had temporarily lost its scowl. He seemed surprised that he had understood her example.
     â€œSo what gets put in the neurostories programming?â€� Nyles asked, “just the overall goal and some elementary behaviors?â€�
     â€œA true neurostory will have an overriding goal, some subgoals, a basic story line to get things started and provide an overall framework, and a set of behavior patterns that make up the personality of the main character. As the story unfolds, these behavior patterns can be rearranged so that new sub plots emerge and new approaches toward achieving the final goal are developed. It creates the experience of the main character making decisions.â€�
     â€œAnd the illusion of free will,â€� Nyles observed.
     â€œJust as in humans,â€� Doctor Curtin retorted. “I don’t think the process is any different than in humans. Our genes determine our basic behaviors and our goals are determined by our genetic programming and our cultural traditions – what Richard Dawkins calls ‘memes’. We rearrange our behaviors in patterns that bring us closer to our goals. As we each monitor our own progress toward our goals we phrase that monitoring in the language of a story line and a character. That’s self-consciousness. That’s what we recreated in neurostories.â€�

hi cadorman,

I have returned your manuscript with my comments.
You will see that I thoroughly enjoyed your story and rate it as good as any from the best SF authors!
I am very grateful that you allowed me to have sight of your story. I have included some minor potential edits for your consideration - many involve the difference between Anglo and American spellings.

Good luck with your next novel, and with your work for children!

best regards, Bill.

Thanks, Bill, I appreciate your edits. "I Carlos" is a work in progress for which I am trying to find an agent at the moment. Any comments are always welcome. Feel free to pass the file along to any others interested in futuristic stories about the mind and the brain. Maybe it will become an "underground" internet hit. Glad you found it  interesting.   cadorman