Presentation at the Goethe Institute in Bangalore India, Oct. 31, 2014

1. Björn Brembs
http://brembs.net
Universität Regensburg

2. “Mental states are always brain states, meaning physical states”
Hans Flohr, neurobiologist

3. No empirical evidence

5. “I could have done otherwise”
Taylor & Dennett 2002

6. “We could often have done otherwise than we in fact did”
Searle 1984

7. “If we choose to remain at rest, we may; if we choose to move, we also may”
David Hume (1711-1776)

8. We have it, but it‘s biology, not magic

17. Source: Ken Catania

18. Reproducibility is not evolutionary stable

19. H. geographicus
Variability in jumping
Royan et al., 2010
M. trinitatis

22. Romuald Nargeot

23. “The freedom of the will consists in the impossibility of knowing actions that still lie in the future”
Ludwig Wittgenstein

24. Under carefully controlled experimental circumstances, an animal will behave as it damn well pleases.

26. Behavioral variability in a constant stimulus situation:
Actions, not responses

27. Decisions or just noise in complex stimulus-response systems?

28. Geometric Random Inner Products: GRIP
All computations Alexander Maye, UKE Hamburg (Maye et al. 2007)

29. Maye et al. (2007)
If one simple stochastic point process is insufficient, maybe we need more…

31. Source: This is Spinal Tap

35. Phototaxis: Gáspár Jékely
Polychaete: Platynereis dumerilii
Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology

36. Pelagial
Benthal
LIGHT
PRESSURE
GRAVITY
CHEMICALS
TEMPERATURE
SALINITY

38. G Jékely et al. Nature 456, 395-399 (2008) doi:10.1038/nature07590

39. α-FVRIamide α-acTub

41. Ongoing activity inhibited/modified by stimuli

42. The limiting factor in the evolution of brain size was energy supply 42

43. 43
The additional energy burden associated with […] the environment may be as little as .5-1.0% of the total energy budget.
Marcus Raichle (2006): Science 314, p1249

44. Ongoing activity inhibited/modified by stimuli

45. Action – Outcome Evaluation

46. =

48. Jonathan Wolpaw

49. Wolpaw TINS (1997) + later data

50. Wolpaw et al, 1984&94; Carp et al, 2006; Wolf et al, 1995

54. Deterministic

55. Stochastic

56. Deterministic

57. Deterministic

58. Deterministic