DrmDoc

Excellent point!

I am not a studier of evolutionary biology and I stated that the example I provided was indeed "rare". I also stated that it was "my view" of the example and clearly the researchers conclusions differ from mine. As I have stated in this discussion thread, I am seldom in agreement with author's conclusions provided in citations for various reasons. Wild animals selectively bred to be docile would likely be selected from among animals captured and held in an environment that promotes docile behaviors. What need is there for an animal to behave aggressively where such pressures do not exist? Again, "I" contend that the evidence suggest to me that the "experiences" of wild animals under domestication promotes a lineage of docile offspring. Conversely, the "rare" reversal or phenomenon associated with animals returned to the wild is indeed a result of selective pressures--the pressures of their experiences in the wild. Essentially, I am suggesting domestication is learned behavior past on to offspring with the effect of decreasing the need for aggressive behaviors among those animals--learning has the affect of influencing the brain architecture among the young of both humans and, apparently, other species.

I tend to abbreviate my explanations in discussions here to make them accessible to all. I understand how natural and artificial selection affects the brain of domesticated animals. However, the science for me appears to suggest that both natural and artificial selection are essentially driven by the experiences of the animal rather than the experience/perspective of their domesticator. There is no disagreement in the science that domesticated animals have smaller brains than their counterparts in the wild. In the brains of domesticated species, the parts associated with aggression and fight/flight behaviors are significantly smaller than their versions in the wild. The theory behind this difference is that the ancestry of domesticated animals were selectively bred by humans for their non-aggressive traits. This would suggest that humans were unknowingly selecting and breeding animals with naturally smaller and smaller amygdalas. I contend that this shinkage occurred as a result of the safe and relatively stable environment of the animal rather than selective breeding between decreasingly aggressive animals--these brain changes occurred because of the animals environment (experience) rather than breeding. This perspective, in my view, is support by the rare reversal of brain volumn of domesticated animals that returned to the wild. Some might suggests that such reversal is a result of natural selection, which again to me suggest the environmental adaptations in behavior that changed the brains of these animals. The question I ask is, "Does experience influence brain architecture?" The evidence suggest that it does. The next question is, "What does this infer about the savant brain's architecture as it may relate to memory retention?" It's clear the seemingly eidetic memory of certain savants involve some permanently accessible neural pathway to selectly detailed memories. If evidence suggests experiences influence brain architecture and it also suggests the potential permenancy of that architectural influence, then the potential for access to the smallest detail of every architectural influence ever expeirenced is possible. The seemingly eidetic brain function of the savant suggest to me that potential possibility regardless of what theory may have been discredited.

Through our discussion, I'm beginning to have a better understanding of memory as it may relate to the autistic savant's brain. We know that experience changes brain structure, which is supported by the differences in brain volumn we have found between domesticated animals and those that live in the wild. Animals that live in the wild, tend to have larger brain volumns because their experiences are richer and more varyed than those we've domesticated or that live in our zoos. What this suggests for the human animal is that all of our experiences are in someway imprinted in/on our brain structure. If this is true, we potentially have memory access to the smallest detail of every sensory experience we have ever encountered--which brings us back to the austistic savant's brain. The memory recall and mathematically abilities of certain celebrated savants are extraordinary. These extraordinary individuals are able to access their memories as though viewing a detail snapshot or imprint of some prior or learned experiences. The difference between our brain and those of a savant involves the permanency of their neural pathways of recall--in this way memory ins't the imprinted prior or learned experiences, but rather the permanent neural pathways of recall linked to those imprinted experiences. In pondering what I mean by permanent neural pathways of recall in the savant brain, I'm referring to some pronounced or incessant reverberant neural stimulation that those pathways must be experiencing. This appears to align with a perspective shared on this site by an austic individual who described how his overwhelming sensory experiences preclude his ability to look and listen to a person at the same time.

Memory regards our ability to recall a prior or learned experience. My take on memory storage and brain waves goes back to my analogy of the well traveled path between destinations in that the path of or to a memory must be frequently traveled or stimulated to be fully recalled. Reverberant stimulation along a set neural pathway (brain waves) stengthens that path of recall to a prior or learned experience. Memory isn't the experience itself, it's the path of conscious recall within the brain to that experience. Assessing whether mind is suggested by any organism we identify regards our ability to assess whether it behaves in a way that is independent of what we have identified as its instinctive behavior. Behavior is a response to stimuli; therefore, the organism must have a both an observable or testable sensory and response system. Evidence of a mind would be produced by the organism's response systems, which we would observe as its behaviors. If any of the animal examples you've consider for the presence of mind displayed behaviors identified as non-instinctive, that animal likely has a mind--of course consideration must be given for whether the animal's non-instinctive behavior was caused by an abnormality or disease affecting its brain function.

With memory, there's this generally accepted idea that the brain produces two types: Short-term working memory and long-term memory. Relative to the dreaming brain, the accepted idea is that dreaming is one way in which our brain consolidates short-term memories into long-term memory. To support this idea, copious research has revealed enhanced acuity in brain function only after it has received sufficient dreaming-level (REM) sleep--however, as I have so often discovered, the researchers conclusions are flawed, which brings us back to the neuronal nature of memory. In brief, the conclusions sleep/memory researchers have reached suggest that memory is like food stock in a refrigerator (short-term memory) that dreaming consolidates or move into freezer storage (long-term memory). This conclusion is flawed because it doesn't account for the effects of our brain's glymphatic system. Briefly, brain activity creates cell waste and the glymphatic process is how the brain cleans itself. Researchers of sleep and dreaming have not accounted for the effects of that process in their research. Sleep/memory researchers gauge the acuity effects of waking and testing sleep study participant amid the various stages of sleep. Their sleep interruption study approach impedes the brain's ability to clean itself, which occurs more efficiently during sleep. These interruptions impede the brain ability to remove obstructions between cell communication--allow our brain to complete its sleep cycles enhances the connectivity between its neurons, which enhances functional acuity. In my view, which appears to be alligned with your neuroscience citations, memory isn't analogous to moving food stock from refrigerator to freezer; memory is a well worn path between destinations that gets lost or forgotten if not traveled often and cleared of debris. How I determine whether an organism's behavior suggest it has a mind is by asking myself if that organism is behaving in way that is independent of its instinctive nature. If an organism is engaging in a behavior that does not align with what we know of its instinctive behaviors, then we may infer from the behaviors we observe that the organism has engaged a choice not to follow its instinct, which to me suggest a thought process. Indeed, behaviors that suggest a thought process infers evidence of a mind and, by my definition, a mind is quantified by a brain's capacity to merge dichotomous sensory data with its memory stores in a process that produces behaviors independent of instinct.

Knowing what consciousness is and how it works depends on one's definition of consciousness. Excluding various faiths and philosophies, the science suggest to me that consciousness is merely a basic awareness suggested by an organism's observed behavioral responses to stimuli and nothing more than that. In my view, every living organism potentially has some level of consciousness, which is simply some level of sensory awareness of its environment. In my view, consciousness and mind are not synonymous--consciousness is a precursor to or prerequisite for mind. Although some ascribe consciousness with some salient or spirital quality, for me it is merely a term that identifies an organism as having a sensory system. Having a sensory system, for me, does not suggest that an organism has a mind; however, having a sensory system is essential for building the response systems essential to the construct of mind--mind is a product of our brain's response systems. For example, during dream sleep, your identity of self relative to your life and sleep environment is lost to that dreaming state. It is only when you awake from the dream state that you become fully aware of who you are relative to physical reality. This happens because our brain does not have full access to the body's sensory system amid the dream state. We regain our full sense of self when we arouse from dream sleep as our brain reconnects to the body's sensory because that connection stimulates those neural pathways our brain uses to navigate our physical/material reality--it is our connection to our body the reminds us of who we are relative to our reality when we awake. Mind and consciousness are not the same because, in my view, having mind is reserved for organisms whose behaviors suggest a thought process. Before ascribing mind to an organism that organism's should demonstrate it's ability to engage behaviors contrary to its instinctive behaviors. For example, if you heard a sudden loud bang from behind, your instinct might be to distance yourself from that noise. If instead the noise came from a person in front of you who popped a balloon, you might not react from fear because you could visually assess the balloon pop threat level--your ability to engage thoughtful behaviors contrary to your fears suggests you have a mind.

If I now understand correctly, this discussion for you is broader than our separate views on the various theories about how mind originates. For you, if I understand, our discussion is also about how the evidence either supports or invalidates those theories. Although I believe there's sufficient evidence supporting a consensus for mind emergence, you believe differring interpretations of the evidence belie that consensus. Again, if I understand correctly, you perceive my perspective as aligned with mind-from-brain with body merely its vessel and sensory array. As you've offerred, your perspective is aligned with mind-from-brain and body with body as an "active participant" in memory, emotion, and cognition. In support of your position, you've offerred various citations suggesting that memory, emotion, and cognition may reside elsewhere in the body. If true, let's begin with memory. This idea of memory transference from cells, bio-matrices, or organs to the brain suggest the transference of these aspects learned experiences from the body external and subordinant to the brain. I don't readily accept evidence of any claim by the title of a paper or by the conclusions of its author. It has been my experience that all papers are in someway biased by the predisposition, objectives, and/or poor science of their authors. So when I explore claims of memory transference from aspects of the body subordinant to the brain, I'm the devil's advocate--I look for flaws and ask myself if these are sufficient to invalidate a claim. Admittedly, I have a predisposed bias to citations and rarely review them in their entirety. But I've prevoiusly read several papers on memory transference with organ transplants and have found them all insufficient for baseline evaluations of transplant recipients. I found their author's investigations should have included a thorough psychological assessment of their subject's history and suggestibility, which would explain their behaviors subsequent to the transplant. Regarding the notion of cell memory transference or "Do cells think", I agree that there is a type of memory transference between cells, but not between cellular matrices and the brain. The memory transference I speak of is described by what happens between cells to adapt to pathogens. To answer whether cells think, one must ask whether cells engage behaviors contrary to their instinctive nature--whether cell behaviors suggest a brain-equivalent thought process. Your perspective on brain-body interplay also offerred emotion and cognition as a body contribution to the mind our brain constructs. Emotion is an efferent response and exclusive domian of brain function. The emotional influence of our brain's subsystems does not describe a package (emotion) delivered to the brain, but instead describe our brain's reaction to that package--which is precisely the same with cognition. More recently, you've offerred citations suggesting the potential influence of wave forces external to the brain. It's true, wave forces such as those generated by strong magnetic fields have been shown to have a direct affect on brain function. This, perhaps, would be the only evidence of support for a wave field external to the brain that has an affect on the mind the brain creates--but this is about resphaping, adjusting or, possibly, ameliorate what's already there in the brain rather than implanting something external to the brain.

It's admittedly difficult to understand your perspective of the idea of mind-through-brain, which you've offerred for our consideration and discussion. The wording of this idea suggest that the brain is merely a conduit for the mind, which is secondary to something else. I also understand the of perception of mind-from-brain as suggesting mind originates from no other factor other than the brain. I believe your counter to that perception has been the idea of mind as a partnership between brain and body. If true, I agree that mind originates from a partnerships between brain and body. However, I don't believe we agree on the nature of that partnership. Foreign Accent Syndrome is a speech disorder that can occur as a result of brain trauma. People with this disorder speak with accent perceived as not native to their own. Other than an individual with savant syndrome, there's indeed no record of spontaneous acquisition of a foreign language due to brain trauma--a tangent that required my correction. In support of the idea of mind-through-brain, you've offerred citations suggesting memory transfers through transplants. These types of citations appear to support the idea of brain being a "conduit" for memories residing in the transplanted origin. My perspective of these types of citations is that they merely reflect the brain's responses to the transplant with something already present in the mind of the transplant's recipient through that recipient's prior knowledge or life experiences. Mind-from-brain, in my view, does indeed involve a partnership between brain and body. Without body--without a means to sense and engage life experience--our brain is incapable of producing a mind. Mind is our brain's cognitive response to stimuli and there is no mind without a brain's capacity to experience stimuli--our body is our brain's vehicle for experiencing stimuli.

Yes, and I have offered my perspective of the role of the body as a sensory array for engaging life experiences that basically support the metabolic/homostatic imperative of the brain and brain function. I'd perfer not to have my focus and discussions diverted by a tangent maze of multiple citations. So my focus has regarded what I believed to be the point you were trying to convey with all of your citations. When you provide citations focusing on "memory transfer and major personality changes" after transplants, it's quite clear your position isn't just about the prominent role of the body in the formation of mind. You are clearly providing support for our consideration of "mind-through-brain," which is counter to the more proven and provable position of "mind-from-brain." If you're promoting consideration of mind-through-brain evidence, that idea infers the emergence of mind or indeed a piece of mind from a location external to the brain. After considering the whole of the citations you've provided, I see that they are flawed. Firstly, self-reported and anecdotal reports or observations of memory transfers and personality changes after organ transplants are not solid science. No where in any of these types of citations have I found discussion of how prior knowledge of the donor or of the donor's lifestyle might have influenced the organ recipient's thoughts and behaviors. For example, one citation mentioned a recipient's aquired taste for beer after receiving the organ of a donor who died in a motorcycle accident. As a scientist, I'd ask, "How much did the donor recipient know about the donor before and after their transplant?" I'd ask, "What impact did that knowledge have on the psychology of the recipient?" As a scientist, there should have been a baseline assessment of the recipient's life and personality prior to receiving any knowledge of the recipient. It may be that the recipient's prior knowledge of bikers influence the psychological impact of receiving an organ from a biker. This is akin to people who experience head trauma and awaken one day speaking a different language or with a foreign accent--the inference is that the trauma these people experience unlock some unconscious store of life experience associated with that foreign language or accent. Indeed it does, like an atrophied muscle through non-use. However, this type of brain transformation doesn't fit the mind-through-brain model. Again, that idea appears to suggest that mind has to come from somewhere external to the brain--that mind has to be input to the brain before mind can be created and expressed by the brain.

I understand the point you're attempting to convey with all of this, which is that these are all at least some psychological evidence that parts of the mind may exist elsewhere in the body and, by extension, part of mind may exist external to the body. It's true that trauma changes the mind our brain creates, but the psychological effects of trauma isn't truly evidence that mind has lost pieces of itself with that truama--it's not evidence that parts of the mind exist in the parts of the body lost or exposed to trauma. The psychological effects of truama simply shows how easily brain's responses are influenced by truama, which is how easily the mind our brain constructs may be influenced by the data it receives through its sensory array. For example, congenital blindness doesn't suggest that parts of the mind are lost to what some are unable to see nor does it suggest that parts of the mind reside in our eyes. What blindness shows is how the lack of access to visual sensory data affects the mind our brain is able to construct--the parts of the brain associated with our responses to visual sensory do not respond or function as efficiently without that sensory data. In another example, the lost of a hand doesn't suggest that a piece of the mind is lost with that hand. The mind our brain constructs through the lost of a limb merely suggests our brain's reaction to the lost of access to the sensory data that limb has or could have provided. Psychological effects, to be clear, are not evidence that pieces of the mind reside elsewhere no more than the depression some experience on rainy days suggests that pieces of the mind reside in sunlight or is blotted out by that rain. The changes in our mental state are merely evidence of the fragility of the balance between the afferent influences on brain functions and our brain's efferent responses to those influences. That may be true, but the real magic is in the mind of the magician who head that hat likely sits upon.

No aplologies are necessary and I, sincerely, appreciate our participation in this discussion. As I mentioned in previous comments, I have a proclivity for perceiving the simplest form of things. When I evaluated the science on the collaboration of brain and body to create mind, I perceive the distinct role each appears to play in that collaboration. In considering the science of brain and body as progenitors of mind, I've asked myself, "What is mind relative to the brain and what is mind relative to the body?" The science informs me that mind is a cognitive response of brain function and the evidence suggests that mind does not exist without brain function. Relative to the body, the science informs me that the body is merely a vehicle that facilitates the brain's survival imperative. From this perspective one might ask, "So how important is the body to the brain functions that produce a mind?" The answer to that question has been provided for centuries through effects of war, experiment, and everyday accidents the body has experienced. Ask yourself, "Has a history of non-fatal body dismemberment showed the disappearance of mind?" Has a significant lost of limbs or removal of prominent organs consistently resulted in a deminished capacity of our brain's ability to produce a mind? Although there may be psychological effects associated with these, those effects are treatable and not consistently permanent. So how important is the body to the brain's production of mind when significant bodily damage doesn't inhibit that production? My certainty of the role of body in the interplay that produces mind is rooted in a clear perspective of that role. A discussion of the things that sit on top of the mind's foundation, in my view, is discussion of the hat that sits upon a head-- the thinking actually occurs below the hat.

I understood your comments regarding the enteric system as an example of the "interplay between brain and body as a whole." My subsequent response regarded how I perceive your example's specific role in that interplay. If I now understand correctly, you perceive mind in a "holistic" form or as a result of a "holistic process." If correct, then I agree with the perspective that mind is indeed a product of a holistic process. In my view, our only disagreement here is how that process operates. What could possibly be more to the foundation of mind than the engine and energy that powers the brain functions generating the mind. Mind, to be clear, doesn't exist without brain function and brain function does not occur without the energy driving that function. The evidence and observations for me have been incredibly clear, which is why I may be perceived as ridgid in expressing my views. However, I do not perceive our exchanges as an issue of who's right and who's wrong, but rather a discussion of point-counterpoint. I enjoy these exchanges as they compel me to re-evaluate and sharpen my perspective when challenged. These discussions have sharpen my perspective and have allowed me to share what little insight I managed to glean over the years. If there's no consensus in neuroscience on the nature of mind, it's not because there isn't sufficient evidence for same--IMO.

I am well versed in the nature of the enteric system and its influence on brain function, but is enteric a mind or a component of the mind? As I explained, mind is the cognitive environment that emerges within the brain itself from brain function. As an influence upon brain function, the enteric system is merely a contributor to that function that unconsciously feul the responses within the brain that generates mind. The enteric system may be a secondary brain that controls subsystems in the body that influence brain function, but it doesn't produce a mind--it doesn't engage in the independent thought processes suggestive of a mind. Having a mind allows an organism's engagement of behaviors independent of its instincts. These are the behaviors that suggest a thought process. That behavior doesn't manifest in the gut. That "gut feeling" some of us boast about is merely our brain's reaction to an extension of its sensory array. Mind is essentially our brain's cognitive reaction to sensory input. Chalmers lost his bet because he didn't full grasp the primary nature of brain function. Most perceive mind and brain function as essentially a collection of synaptic discharges. I perceive mind and brain function through the metabolic processes at the basis of those synaptic activities. From single cell to complex organism, the primary imperative of these lifeforms is homestasis, which is an imperative to maintain metabolic stability. In the brain, homestasis isn't a thought process, it's the metabolic mechanism that powers and drive those processes. When you fully grasp the nature of homestasis in brain function, you will grasp the nature of thought and mind in its most basic form.

I understand and the fault is mine. I have a proclivative for preceiving the most basic form of things and I may not have fully explained this reductionist perspective. There are two basic components of my overall perspective and mind is just one component. Brain function comprises a balance between afferent (input) and efferent (output) components. Affects that channel into our central nervous system from source external to core brain function provide the impetus for that function. Our brain's functional responses to that impetus are its efferent output. The cognitive environment within the brain that emerges as mind is an efferent response to affects external to core brain functions, such as gut biome. Indeed, mind and brain are distinct with the former being an enironment of cognitive activity and the latter being the structure that generates that cognitive activity. However, when we discuss the involvement of components external to the brain, it's a discussion about the intake feuling the generator that creates mind. The key takeaway from all of this is that afferent influences do not comprise the mind, they are merely the stimulus that generate the confluence of brain responses that merge to create the mind. The question of emergence and confluence is answerable by an imperative of brain function, which I briefly explored in previous discussions. The primary imperative of brain function is homeostasis, which our brain's functional effort to maintain its metabolic balance. It's a delicate balance that is influenced by everything we sense, perceive, and experience from in vitro until brain death. Life experience stimulates brain activity, which consumes our brain's energy uptake. The mental and behavior responses our brain generates provides a conterbalance to that stimulation. For example, my comments here have an afferent neural affect on the brain function of those who read them. It's a reverberant neural effect that expends energy and does not wane without a response that has a nullifying effect. For some, that nullifying effect may be to ignore my comments or, for other, to ponder a responses. The effect of all of this in the brain is its effort to effect a neural counterbalance to a specific reverberant stimuli compromising it metabolic balance--which is essentially the metabolic nature of thought.

I believe it was CharonY who initially asked how you define the mind and your comments above appears to at least suggest how you perceive mind relative to the brain. Your comments suggest to me that you perceive mind as something whole and singular that emerges from or residing in a specific place relative to brain function or structure. If true, that perception is wrong. Mind isn't a localized quality. Mind is the environment of cognitive activity within the brain that emerges from a conflunce of brain function rather than from some specific brain structure or source. Mind is a construct of brain function that isn't fully realized when any component of that function is compromised. Through homestatsis, mind emerges as an efferent response to afferent stimuli. Even more, mind is evinced by and is exclusive to behavioral expressions that suggest a thought process. If one were to answer "where is mind in the brain", the answer would be everywhere as it the cognitive environment within the brain created by our brain's responses to life experience.

Electromagnetism is real evidence, it measureable, and can be traced to a tangible source. I understand the idea you're trying to convey here but, like electromagnetism, we have real evidence for the mind, it measureable through functional study, and we can traced our human iteration of mind to a tangible source--the human brain. There may very well be forces out there whose source and nature we may not fully understand (e.g., dark energy), but not the metabolic forces and minutia of brain function that give rise to that environment of cognitive activity within the brain that produces a mind. That enironment of cognitive activity within the brain from which mind emerges is our brain's response to stimuli external to brain function; however, the source of the mind remains brain function. That stimuli external to brain function I described is real, it's measureable, it's tangible--it's life experience.

And there it is...the unproven and unprovable...the lie that discards real evidence for faith, feeling, and supposition. It is the idea that the brain is merely a lense for some noncorporeal source of the mind that isn't rooted in material evidence. So why are some so determined to believe in that idea? Is it fear of the inevitable or an earnest interest in devining some great truth or deep mystery for posterity's sake? It's the other way around, conventional wisdom isn't science and should be discarded without "findings-observations-data". Perhaps, but you seem to have doubts. If I'm not mistaken from our previous discussion, terminal lucidity appears to be a primary source of your doubts in brain function as the absolute source of the quality we call mind. Whether lucid or confused, mind is a product of the ebb and flow of brain function emerging from what are basically its metabolic,homestatic processes. However, it seem, you believes there's something more?

I meant no disrespect, but what you're discussing here isn't much different from our previous exchanges other than perhaps your clearer assertion of mind emerging from some non-physical/material source. If I've misunderstood, my apologies; however, any assertion of mind emerging without a brain or some functionally similar structure is ludicrous without a basis in science. From all you have discussed here, you have not sufficiently nor convincingly provided such a basis. From nearly half-century in private study of the dreaming brain and now amid the twilight of my life, I want to believe that their could be something more to the nature of the mind than I have discovered...but I believe in the science, I believe in the objective truths good science provides. To believe in something more may be comforting, but it's a lie if not proven or provable and I, personally, won't believe in a lie.

Why is any of this still a question? Didn't we have this discussion here (Mind) ad nauseam?

Yes, but it appears only extraordinary findings will satisfy your quest for understanding rather than findings that are clearly ordinary. The ordinary answer to your inquiry resides in the resiliency of our physiology, which itself is truly extraordinary--imho.

A burst of energetic behavioral expressions near death after a pregressively degenerative brain condition isn't miraculous especially if the neural apparatus for such expression remains sufficiently functional--which it must be for such expressions to occur. What's left is for us to investigate what neural apparatus remains in place that has allowed for near normal behavior expression amid a severely degradated brain state. The observation that these burst of enegetic expressions occurs near death suggest a power-up in a system where the power supplied by limited resources have been redirected from less functional pathways to those that remain sufficiently functional to produce those expressions. Again, this isn't particularly miraculous given what we aready understand about the nature of plasticity in brain function.

Citations aside for the moment, consider the objective evidence which is that no expression of lucidity exists without some connection between the cortex and thalamus. Consider the distinction between a mildly impaired and severely impaired thalamus in that mild impairment is likely not sufficient to obstruct periods of lucidity. None of the citations you've provided suggested impairments that would prevent occassional expression of lucid behaviors with sufficient function and connectivity with the brain--succinctly, there's no behavioral expressions without sufficient brain function and connectivity. Although AD progression can severely damage the connectivity between the thalamus and cortex, periods of lucidity can persist with sufficient function and connection between the thalamus and cortex. This sufficient function and connection is proved by your observance of lucidity expression within a severely compromised AD neural environment. The observance that lucidity can persist with a severely damaged brain isn't evidence of anything particularly miraculous, it is merely a testament to the plasticity of our central nervous system amid periods of severe distress.

I may have been a bit wordy in explaining my position. To simplify, lucid behavioral expression is largely dependent on the connection and exchanges between the neocortex and the thalamus. Between these two components the thalamus is more vital to our survival and brain function than the neocortex. The thalamus importance is suggested by how little cortical structure is required for behavioral expression and how nothing happens in the brain without thalamic function. Lucidity can occur with a severely degrade cortex because it is not as essential to that state as the thalamus' ability to rewire and adapt its function to limited cortical function. Behavioral efference (output) is coordinated through thalamic function; therefore, lucid behaviors are an output of thalamic function. To attenuate, refine, and focus its behavioral output, the thalamus relies on a healthy cortex throughout the life of a healthy individual. When there's degradation in the brain, this doesn't necessarily infer degradation of thalamic function. When we see moments of lucidity in AD patients this suggests that their thalamus has adapted new cortical connection to express that lucidity. Those connections may become tenuous as the AD cortex continues to degrade. Sporadic periods of lucidity suggest the tenuous nature of the neural connectivity between the cortex and thalamus in a deteriorating neural environment--like a damaged wire connecting a lamp to its power source.

The crux of your inquiry here appears to question how a brain with severely degraded structure produces behaviors that suggest full functionality and lucidity. The answer to that requires a cohesive and cogent understanding of brain function by way of its functional evolution. My understanding of evolution informed me that the functionality of recent brain components is dependent on the function of earlier components and that the function of those early brain components was enhanced by those that emerged recently in brain development. From my perspective of brain evolution, functionality developed along a clear contiguous path from components that appear to engage primitive functions to those that seem more evolved in their functionality. To answer the question of functional plasticity in a severely degraded brain, let’s begin with the thalamus. Most researchers regard the thalamus as a primitive brain structure relative to the neocortex. This suggests that the functionality of the neocortex likely developed after the functional development of the thalamus and that neocortical function is dependent on thalamic function for that reason—the neocortex can’t do what it does for our cognition without a fully functional thalamus as its base. From my perspective of evolution, recent developments build upon and enhance the efficiency of earlier developments. Evolution doesn’t necessarily discard primitive developments, but rather build upon and enhance those that are successful. If that’s true, then our neocortex somehow builds upon and enhances the functionality of the thalamus—but how? If we agree that the thalamus is our brain’s focal (hub) for sensory input (afference), integration, and output (efference) of our responses to sensory input, we should agree that neocortical function builds upon and enhances what our thalamus does for brain function—that’s if we accept the tenets of evolutional development as I’ve provided. If our thalamus is a focal for processing (integration) afference and engaging efferently focused behaviors, what might the thalamus need to enhance that function? The answer is likely to be memory as it adds precision to our behaviors. Next to comparing the relative nature and impact of our sensory experiences (integration), memory is perhaps most important because it allows us to mediate our behavioral responses according to our recall of past sensory experiences—Essentially, memory allows us to learn from our experiences. This type of mediation would have been essential to the survival of ancestral animals because it would likely have allowed them to conserve their energetic responses to only that stimulus of survival significance. Memory, among other things, allows us to mediate our behavioral responses to stimuli we’ve learned about and know not to be of significant impact on our experiences and that, at a minimum, is how neocortical function enhances thalamic function. More precisely, neocortical function allows us to engage in precise behavioral responses relative to our current sensory experiences based on our prior experiences. Our thalamus has adapted the neocortex as a kind of thinking cap or an extended workspace where the thalamus may attenuate its processing of sensory data. Regarding plasticity with degraded neocortical structures, clearly a fully functional thalamus that has adapted to limited workspace doesn’t need as much neocortical structure to attenuate its processing as a healthy brain might require. A functional thalamus in a healthy brain that has suffered severe degeneration requires time to adapt if it does at all within that compromised neural environment. Resiliency and lucidity is likely dependent on our thalamus’ ability to adapt to its compromised neural environment.