I think so. I was imagining an additional mechanism where the outputs compete with other parts of the brain for the final say on what your muscles are doing. If they control muscles directly, that would mean ‘I’ can’t choose not to have flinch if the supervised learning algorithm says I should (right?) -- which I guess does actually align with experience.
There’s almost definitely competition between different systems trying to control muscles. The basal ganglia has at least something to do with judging the competition and picking winners. The neocortex competes with other parts of the neocortex, and against the amygdala and maybe brainstem, I dunno. But I’m not sure that we should think of the cerebellum as a competitor. I think of the cerebellum as a personal assistant for the competitors. So if it thinks that the neocortex is going to place a bid to move a muscle, it preemptively places that bid itself, and if the neocortex later says something different, the cerebellum says “oops, my bad, I’ll forward that bid instead, and try to get it right next time”.
So maybe I implied here that the cerebellum is responsible for flinching. That’s kinda true, but after writing this I read that really the amygdala knows that flinching is the right thing to do, and then the cerebellum learns to make the flinch happen more quickly. (Not 100% sure on that.)
I think so. I was imagining an additional mechanism where the outputs compete with other parts of the brain for the final say on what your muscles are doing. If they control muscles directly, that would mean ‘I’ can’t choose not to have flinch if the supervised learning algorithm says I should (right?) -- which I guess does actually align with experience.
There’s almost definitely competition between different systems trying to control muscles. The basal ganglia has at least something to do with judging the competition and picking winners. The neocortex competes with other parts of the neocortex, and against the amygdala and maybe brainstem, I dunno. But I’m not sure that we should think of the cerebellum as a competitor. I think of the cerebellum as a personal assistant for the competitors. So if it thinks that the neocortex is going to place a bid to move a muscle, it preemptively places that bid itself, and if the neocortex later says something different, the cerebellum says “oops, my bad, I’ll forward that bid instead, and try to get it right next time”.
So maybe I implied here that the cerebellum is responsible for flinching. That’s kinda true, but after writing this I read that really the amygdala knows that flinching is the right thing to do, and then the cerebellum learns to make the flinch happen more quickly. (Not 100% sure on that.)