- #1
Mike S.
- 90
- 32
- TL;DR Summary
- Yea or nay: the prefrontal cortex is an area often used for organizing complex future motor activities that you *don't want to do*. Its glutamate-secreting neurons leading to NMDA receptors in basal ganglia account for the "watcher" perception associated with some psychoactive drugs.
(This site has the issue that sometimes I get to reading some thread that came up, only to find it "closed" when I go to log into reply. This time I'm going ahead and just starting one then.)
The prefrontal cortex is known for glutamate-secreting neurons leading to synapses with NMDA receptors. As illustrated in a rat brain at the end of that article, these neurons connect to the ventral tegmentum, dorsal raphe, and locus coeruleus. These three, respectively, have to do with addiction/feedback, attention/alertness, and stress/panic. The prefrontal cortex also signals to basal nuclei, which may be linked to "contention scheduling", but older ideas of prefrontal cortex use in "working memory" seem to have fallen into disfavor.
Some overall ideas I'm thinking of...
The prefrontal cortex is known for glutamate-secreting neurons leading to synapses with NMDA receptors. As illustrated in a rat brain at the end of that article, these neurons connect to the ventral tegmentum, dorsal raphe, and locus coeruleus. These three, respectively, have to do with addiction/feedback, attention/alertness, and stress/panic. The prefrontal cortex also signals to basal nuclei, which may be linked to "contention scheduling", but older ideas of prefrontal cortex use in "working memory" seem to have fallen into disfavor.
Some overall ideas I'm thinking of...
- Everything anterior to the primary motor cortex is in one way or another about planning future motor activity. The prefrontal cortex is far forward in the frontal lobe, so it does so very indirectly, but that is still its ultimate purpose.
- Planning motor activities involves both when to do things and when not to do things, so understanding when a certain pattern of activity is not to be done is part of what a patch of frontal lobe needs to do.
- I like to think of the basal nuclei in a framework where the thalamus is the "boss" in the brain, entitled to advance reports of all sensory data and capable of ordering practically any part of the cortex into operation.
- The input from the "little people" of the cerebral cortex back to the thalamus gets filtered through layers and layers of bureaucracy otherwise known as basal nuclei. The basal nuclei pick one competing voice out of the crowd to be heard - a simple example of its breakdown being stuttering, where you have several neurons ordering words to be said at slightly different times, and the basal nuclei hopefully pick only one of these options to go with.
- The prefrontal cortex has a somewhat different role with the basal nuclei because it is usually naysaying ideas - things you won't do - rather than going ahead with them. These patterns of activity can be things you've never done - like clawing your eye out - but which your brain needs to be able to recognize, which implies visualize, which implies being able to imagine the pattern of motor activity to do it even though you aren't going to practice or go through with it.
- Subjectively, a user of nearly any "psychedelic" will say that they have the sense of a "watcher" in the brain that prevents crazy ideas running through their head from turning into serious self-harm. Unless they use something like PCP that interferes with those glutamate-secreting prefrontal neurons!
- Recognizing a self-harming pattern of activity in the prefrontal cortex leads to an activation of basic pathways, such as dorsal raphe and locus coeruleus, that are meant to perk you up and focus your attention on something you might have been about to do (such as accidentally cutting yourself, or someone else, with a knife)
