International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

Information remains potential until it is received and organized by a brain (in its own autopoietic way), computer or any other electronic means. These latter ones acquire meaning by making a difference… but only when reaching a brain.

J.J. GIBSON criticizes the pure communication theory of information: "The information that can be extracted from ambient light is not the kind of information that is transmitted over a channel. There is no sender outside the head and no receiver inside the head".

At least, there is no specific transmitting device "out there". The real world does not transmit messages, even if electromagnetic waves ramble all around us. "The world does not speak to the observer… Words and pictures convey information, carry it or transmit it, but the information in the sea of energy around each of us; luminous or mechanical or chemical energy, is not conveyed, it is simply there" (1986, p.242). In von FOERSTER's words: "The world is as it is"… and that's all ". As to what is inside the head, it is much more than a receiving device, even if the senses are specialized as pick up devices. We could do nothing with collected sensorial data if our brain were not organized to "understand' them, that is interpret them in relation to its acquired internal order, i.e. its organizational closure, in autopoietic terms.

GIBSON's reaction against pure mechanicist cybernetics is anyhow understandable and quite common to many psychologists and sociologists. But his problem seems to be more semantic than anything else: Our senses do not collect information, nor even perceptions; they collect sensations. Accordingly a sentence like: "Direct perception is the activity of getting information from the ambient array of light" (p.147), is ambiguous.

→ Knowledge (Tacit)

More recently, A. ZELEZNIKAR still reflects somehow the mechanicist view and describes accordingly the nervous system and the brain as receivers, processors and emissors of information. (After all, there is something therein!)

"Brain is a living substance and behavior is a living processing. Brain is the commanding apparatus of a being's behavior. Brain is a sort of information machine, which enables and handles information processes of behavior. The brain also influences and in some way structurally and organizationally limits behavior, and behavior has similar developmental and generative influence on these functions (informational processes) which frame the so-called mind. Brain and behavior are particular examples of information forms and information processes.

"Brain consists of basic informational units which are the neurons and the glia cells. These basic units govern the most elaborate cognitive functions (behavioral processes). The functioning of neurons in the brain is influenced by the behavior, which comes as a consequence of sensory information from other beings as well as from other environmental phenomena. However, groups of neurons are structured (functionally connected) within the nervous system into regional subsystems (regions, areas, nuclei), so that behavioral processes can be localized in specific areas of the brain. Regions of the brain are specialized for many different processes, which constitute particular behavioral information – mental and motorial. The central nervous system is a bilateral and essentially symmetrical information machinery, which consists of the following main parts:

"1. The spinal cord receives information from the skin, joints, and muscles of the trunk and limbs, and sends out motor information for the reflex movement and voluntary movement.

"2. The medulla oblongata is the supreme extension of the spinal cord and incorporates, in addition to other nuclei, reflex nuclei for breathing, functioning of heart, coughing, vomiting, etc.

"3. The pons and the cerebellum are supreme to the medulla. The cerebellum is modulating the force and range of movement.

"4. The midbrain is supreme to the pons and lies between hindbrain (the medulla, pons and cerebellum) and the forebrain (the diencephalon and cerebral cortex)

"5. The diencephalon contains two informational relay structures. The thalamus processes most of the information coming from the rest of the central nervous system to the cerebral cortex. The hypothalamus controls autonomic, endocrine, and visceral integration.

"6. The cerebral hemispheres consist of the basal ganglia and the overlaying cerebral cortex. Both the cortex and the basal ganglia are concerned with higher perceptual, cognitive and motor information

"The medulla, pons, and midbrain constitute the brain stem which contains cranial nerve nuclei which in turn receive information from the skin and muscles of the head and from the special senses of hearing, balance, and taste. Other nuclei regulate motor output information to the muscles of the face, neck and eyes. The brain stem incorporates another structure called the reticular formation, which determines levels of arousal and awareness.

"Another structural and organizational principle of the brain is parallel (information) processing. Brain processes are served by more than one pathway. Within the brain, the cortex is divided into two hemispheres with four anatomically distinct and functionally specialized lobes: the frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal. In these lobes, planning and movement, somatic sensation, vision and audition as well as learning, memory and emotion are processed respectively. Each hemisphere of the cerebral cortex is concerned with sensory and motor processes of the contralateral side of the body. The hemispheres are not symmetrical in structure, nor are they equivalent in function (information processing). For example the cognitive aspects of language processing are localized in Wernicke's area and in Broca's area in the left hemisphere. However, affective components of language as the musical intonation of speech, emotional gesturing, prosodic comprehension, and comprehension of emotional gesturing are processes in the right hemisphere, where their anatomical organization mirrors that which is for cognitive language in the left hemisphere.

"Even though, the brain is immensely complex and the structure and the function of many of its parts are still poorly understood, it is becoming more and more evident that it is an informatically structured and informatically organized apparatus with specific processes occuring in its parts. These processes – the mind – is an informational function which is becoming more and more understandable in modern neural science and in informatics" (1988, p.210-12).

Summarizing and complementing, the brain:

- is endowed with a complex anatomical and physiological organization which is improved by learning, which may grant it a wide variety;

- is endowed with a huge potential capacity for processing information (however this capacity remains limited);

- works in a parallel way, which limits the deterministic character of its activity and endows it with a certain randomness, which is probably the origin of creativity.

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