Today I didn't read anything new, so I will summarize some of the things I have read before as today's content.
The Function of the Cerebellum#
"What does the Cerebellum Do Anyway? - by Sarah Constantin"
An article that once made it to the front page of HN, introducing the cerebellum, an organ that we consider to be very primitive. Unlike our preconceptions, this article introduces many facts about the functions of the cerebellum and its amazing abilities. After reading it, I realized that I underestimated the functionality of the cerebellum. It may play an equally important role in the formation of human higher intelligence as the brain.
Modern Homo sapiens is as much characterized by our big cerebellums as by our big frontal lobes.
Some facts:
- The granule cells in the cerebellum actually contain 80% of the neurons in the entire nervous system.
- As the intelligence of primates continues to grow, the capacity of the cerebellum also increases rapidly.
She mentioned a type of cell called Purkinje cell, which only exists in the cerebellum. For example, your blink reflex is controlled by Purkinje cells. When you suddenly encounter bright light, Purkinje cells stop firing, causing you to blink. Purkinje cells can achieve single-cell learning, and scientists have not found any other brain region in vertebrates that can achieve this ability.
In addition, the cerebellum is actually the learning center for classical conditioning, and its existence is a necessary condition for classical conditioning.
However, these cells can not only learn classical conditioning, but also learn the concept of quantity to some extent by learning the associations between stimuli. From this, it can be inferred that the cerebellum also has the ability of planning and measurement, and it can generate anticipation in various human behaviors, improving the accuracy of control.
Patients with cerebellar injuries may experience intentional tremors. When patients try to perform purposeful movements (such as touching objects), their hands or other body parts may swing back and forth significantly. This swinging may be caused by a symptom called "dysmetria", which refers to the inability of patients to accurately estimate the required movement distance or intensity, resulting in overshooting, like a control system with incorrect parameters.
Another symptom of cerebellar injury is the inability to use logical connectives correctly, resulting in incorrect usage of conjunctions such as "It's a big job, but it's not easy." This is the inability to correctly plan the logical relationship between sentences.
These examples reveal the role of the cerebellum in planning and control, and also reveal that the control of the cerebellum is a form of predictive control, achieving more efficient control by creating expectations. If the cerebellum cannot create expectations, humans will not completely lose the ability to learn or control, but this process will degrade into a more inefficient trial and error.
The article also contains a lot of other content about the cerebellum, but I only selected the parts that are most meaningful to me. If you are interested, I recommend reading the original article.
Blog: Rough Diamonds#
Sarah Constantin's blog Rough Diamonds is something I found on Hackers News. I found her blog because of the article she wrote about the cerebellum (mentioned earlier). She is very prolific in writing blogs, with a high frequency, and the content is substantial, far from the casual articles like mine. Despite the large number of articles, she can still maintain the quality, with concise wording and clear meaning, which is impressive. She also wrote an article about how she writes to introduce her background and advice.
Because her mother worked in the publishing industry (possibly as a senior editor), her upbringing was different. The living room in her home was actually filled with books from floor to ceiling. This special experience has contributed to her writing skills:
I have probably written more words, lifetime, than I have spoken aloud. I am a basically textual creature, is what I am saying.
My mom was in the publishing industry, and she inked up my school assignments when I was a kid with brutal, spot-on edits. And there were always plenty of books at home; my childhood apartment had a “TV room” that was a bit of a misnomer given that every wall had built-in bookshelves with my parents’ books, clear to the ceiling.
She introduces some of her writing habits, and I think there are some that I can relate to (trying to reach a higher level). For example, she does micro editing between lines, and she repeatedly makes paragraph and sentence modifications in her mind while taking walks. Sometimes I also have a similar attitude towards what I write. Instead of focusing on writing the content for the first time, I spend more energy on repeatedly refining and modifying it after it is completed.
She introduces her principles for English writing, with the core being "make your point using strong, short, plain words". The following specific advice is also worth keeping in mind:
If you had a good English teacher, or a newspaper editor, do what they told you to do.
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.