Artficial Brain

Geert Masureel
(geert.masureel@theartificialbrain.com)
Preface................................................................................................................................................. 5
It’s all about linking and comparison................................................................................................ 7
Warming Up....................................................................................................................................7
Linking, comparison and decisions............................................................................................... 7
Neural Networks............................................................................................................................. 8
Procedural or not ?........................................................................................................................... 10
Introduction.................................................................................................................................. 10
Thanks time and space !...............................................................................................................10
Scripting is the answer !............................................................................................................... 11
Other advantages of scripting..................................................................................................... 11
The main protector............................................................................................................................ 13
Introduction.................................................................................................................................. 13
The amygdala................................................................................................................................ 13
Emotions and feelings....................................................................................................................... 15
Some free thoughts on emotions.................................................................................................. 15
Fear................................................................................................................................................ 15
Feelings, the derivatives of fear................................................................................................... 16
Disgust and surprise..................................................................................................................... 17
Curiosity and acceptance............................................................................................................. 18
Pain................................................................................................................................................ 19
Aggression..................................................................................................................................... 19
Believe, the driving force !................................................................................................................ 21
Introduction.................................................................................................................................. 21
Believe, always believe ….............................................................................................................21
The three states of believe and doubt......................................................................................... 22
The diverse forms of consciousness..................................................................................................24
Introduction.................................................................................................................................. 24
Consciousness................................................................................................................................ 24
Some free thoughts..................................................................................................................... 24
Another approach towards answers............................................................................................ 25
Conscious versus subconscious.................................................................................................... 25
Self-awareness (self-conscious).................................................................................................... 27
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You may distribute this document or use parts out of it for free but a reference to
http://www.theartificialbrain.com is always required. This reference must be within reasonable distance from a
quote and the font type, style and height must be easy readable !
© Copyright 2005-2007 Geert Masureel - Page 2 of 60

The ultimate A.I. Challenge – The artificial brain
Creativity, dreams, imagination and thinking........................................................................... 28

Impact on the digital brain.......................................................................................................... 29
Unexpected processes of the subconscious...................................................................................... 31
Intuition or following the own instincts...................................................................................... 31
Imitation and insight.................................................................................................................... 31
What about hormones ?.................................................................................................................... 33
Introduction.................................................................................................................................. 33
Hormones...................................................................................................................................... 33
An odd question : is puberty required ?..................................................................................... 33
The impact on the digital brain................................................................................................... 34
The hormone part....................................................................................................................... 34
The pre-juvenile phase............................................................................................................... 34
The juvenile phase...................................................................................................................... 36
Deeper thoughts.................................................................................................................................37
'I think, therefore I am ...'............................................................................................................37
The buzzword 'perception'.......................................................................................................... 37
Values and ego.................................................................................................................................. 39
Introduction.................................................................................................................................. 39
Relativity....................................................................................................................................... 39
Standard of values........................................................................................................................ 39
The world turns around you !..................................................................................................... 40
Self-interest, always !....................................................................................................................41
Altruism ….................................................................................................................................... 42
A number of important actors........................................................................................................... 43
Motivation..................................................................................................................................... 43
Appreciation versus punishment.................................................................................................43
Instincts......................................................................................................................................... 44
Memory.............................................................................................................................................. 45
Introduction.................................................................................................................................. 45
What about synapses ?................................................................................................................. 45
Storing information...................................................................................................................... 45
The inner voice.............................................................................................................................. 46
The principles behind belief and fear......................................................................................... 47
The ‘play-zone’............................................................................................................................. 48
The long-term memory................................................................................................................ 49
© Copyright 2005-2007 – Geert Masureel – geert.masureel@theartificialbrain.com - Page 3 of 60

Visualization.................................................................................................................................. 50
Fragmentation...............................................................................................................................51
Mirror neurons............................................................................................................................. 51
What types of memory are needed ?...........................................................................................51
Attention............................................................................................................................................ 52
Introduction.................................................................................................................................. 52
Concentration............................................................................................................................... 52
Appendix 1 : A sample diagram........................................................................................................ 54
Introduction.................................................................................................................................. 54
The diagram.................................................................................................................................. 54
Explanation................................................................................................................................... 55
Digital Cerebellum (A) and the Play-zone (B)........................................................................... 55
Pain (C)....................................................................................................................................... 55
Surprise (F)................................................................................................................................. 56
Attention (E)............................................................................................................................... 56
Curiosity (G)............................................................................................................................... 56
Digidala (J)................................................................................................................................. 57
Labeling (L)................................................................................................................................ 57
Data Temp (M)........................................................................................................................... 57
Digi LTP (Long Term Potentiation) (N).................................................................................... 57
Main Data (O).............................................................................................................................58
Acceptance (I)............................................................................................................................ 58
Rewarding (K) and Punishment (D)........................................................................................... 58
Instincts (P)................................................................................................................................. 59
Conscious versus subconscious.................................................................................................. 59
Epilog................................................................................................................................................. 60
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Preface
A lot of research has already been done in the field of A.I. or C.I., but when looking closer no major
breakthrough has yet been accomplished in creating an Artificial Brain (A.B.) ! Why ? A wrong approach
in the way of looking at this challenge is the answer ! Imitating brain functions (like neural networks or
even some emotions) help us in a lot of domains where a simple form of intelligence is needed, but as
some experts in neural networks have discovered by now, something is missing (as a matter of fact a
lot is missing) to go from that one point to an actual self learning system capable of real thinking in 'new'
fields (like we do).
Some major companies invest heavily in artificial neurons or even build microchips by cutting tiny slices
of both human and non-human brain-parts and measuring the electric charge present at that moment in
the hope to achieve a major breakthrough in creating an artificial brain ! The key question remains if this
is the road to success and personally I am not really convinced it is !
The available processing power of computer systems (even with multiple processors per system) these
days is so immense and thanks to networks, this capacity can be adjusted till virtually unlimited ! Of
course, computer systems are not the best host for gigantic parallel multitasking as required for super-
complex neural networks like brain imitations where this capacity is the primary necessity. But instead
of overcomplicating things by imitating the brain to the letter, I took a complete different approach and
as you will discover in this document, it is not only simpler, better manageable and cheaper, but if
developed in an experienced team it should be very well possible to have a fully functional artificial
brain within a reasonable timeframe !!!! A side effect of my research is the fundamental wisdoms I
discovered directly applicable in the field of human interest like psychology. Also in this area I
personally have the feeling a lot is known (and sometimes made extremely complicated) but the pieces
not always fall together and that is a shame since most people could (in)directly benefit from this …
What needed to be done was to find out how our thinking process works. Forget for a moment all
you've ever learned about the brain (psychological and physical) and follow me in this journey. After all,
wasn't it John Nash (Nobel prize winner in Economics in 1994) who once stated that existing
information always leads you away from being creative in finding true answers ... ... and who am I to
argue such wisdom !
This document is primary written as a theoretical guide in creating an A.B.. It covers most fundamentals
needed in developing an artificial brain. How to implement this is not always covered since that is not
the primary goal of this writing, but all main parts are described as well as why they are required to
obtain a fully functional Artificial Brain. As bonus, you will find a fully explained input diagram in
Appendix 1.
Keep in mind that it is a summary of the path I had to follow for over more than 20 years. It is quite
heavy stuff and I would be surprised if anyone is capable to fully understand in-depth at the first
reading. Different fields of expertise are mixed constantly. And although I try to explain everything in a
simple way (with real life examples), don't be discouraged if it takes several readings to get a total
overview of the picture ...
How I came to the knowledge in this document ? At the age of 14, a long time before I discovered being
high gifted (in 1997, at the age of 27, and Mensa Belgium Member since then), I struggled with the fact
that everybody else was so different in mindset than I was (at that moment I hadn't figured out that it
was me who was the odd man out). At a certain moment it became almost unbearable and I realized I
needed to find a way to figure out how 'the others' were thinking. First I started reading the classical
psychology books, but didn't find real answers. No, I needed to dig deeper and at that moment my
actual search truly began. At the age of 17 I discovered the personal computer and instantly I knew we
would be best friends for life ! It didn't take long to see the similarities in the working of the brain and the
way a computer operates and at the age of 22 I had a first (primitive) scheme how it could work, but
there were so many necessary missing links like emotions, fear, appreciation, motivation and feelings

that I decided to make it my primary target to exactly figure out how our thinking process works. It took
almost another ten years to see full clarity and a couple of years afterwards to overcome the last
obstacles.
In every design I make, I use the elementary rule Einstein mentioned once : “You should make
everything as simple as possible, but not simpler” ! So not a single item can be deleted out of this
design if the target is a true working ánd autonomous digital brain.
Have fun and not only discover that an artificial brain is very well possible but learn as well how You
and everyone else is thinking ...
Geert Masureel
geert.masureel@theartificialbrain.com
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It’s all about linking and comparison
Warming Up
Stretching your legs, lifting an arm, listening to some music or watching an exciting movie, all of these
processes are conducted by the brain. Few people will doubt this. But if we look at some processes
running in the background, like how the brain steers the ratio saliva (chemically a base) versus the
amount of gastric juice (chemically an acid) via the taste- and smell receptors is less common known.
This brings us to an essential issue. In this document I use human behavior as a starting point to
discover the way the thinking process functions and it is of the utmost importance to keep in mind that
the object 'human' is far more complicated than what I state here. Humans need to have the ability to
reproduce, regenerate, eat, ... Some behavior is partially or completely triggered or influenced by these
needs and therefore it is crucial to eliminate these factors or even discover the necessity of such a
'need' to obtain a functioning 'brain'.
Linking, comparison and decisions

Keep this in mind !
Everything in the brain is about comparison, linking and thanks to
both also taking decisions. A soldier at the front will weight out the Not all parts in the (human) brain
impact place of an incoming grenade by the whistling. If the sound is communicate directly with each other and
louder than the previous time, the impact will be nearer and vice- disconnections in the interconnected brain-
parts (lesions) mostly result in severe
versa. The moment 'our veteran', thanks to linking and comparison, malfunctions. All organic brains (human
concludes the next incoming grenade could be very well right on top and non-human) are pretty well defined
of him, a decision will be taken to duck, run away or to crouch lower. and leave almost no room for error in the
blueprint !
When we learn to walk or bicycle, we compare the visual
information combined with the data provided by the organs of Therefore, when I use the sentence
‘everything in the brain is about
balance from previous times (falling) until we reach that point of true comparison and linking’, in fact I mean that
balance. The decisions we took were the small corrections to obtain in all these separate brain-parts the same
the balance. principle of comparing and linking is
applicable.
Never wondered why we often say or think 'Hé, that looks (a little)
like ...' when something new is on the market or happens to us. It The brain exists out of neurons and linking
and comparison is basically what most
could be a new perfume, song, book, taste or even piece of art. neurons do. So this should not be a
Actually, for the thinking process it even doesn't matter where the surprise for those familiar with the working
base signal originates (smell, sense, ...) as long as there is a of neurons or neural networks …
possibility to compare and link, preferably but not necessarily to
something we already know. That's why You think the same when I Good to know !
show a picture of a cow, make the sound of a cow or even when
You smell a cow cake You just stepped in. It is also the reason why Some believe that the differences in both
hemispheres of the human brain are the
a person with a malfunction in one of the five senses will have no result of limited neurons available in the
problem in optimizing one of the others to overcome this. As human, brain and therefore specific tasks are
we are limited to our five senses (smell, taste, feeling, seeing and dedicated to specific parts, without being
hearing), but the thinking process is perfectly capable of interpreting symmetrical or even logical …
other 'sensors', as long as there is the possibility to compare and
link.
Because one of the main features of the thinking process is comparison, there must be a point of
reference or calibration. If one does not know how long a meter is or how heavy one kilogram is, there
is no way of comparing. Since none of us is born with a list of calibration- or reference points, primal
experiences are used as initial reference points. In most cases new experiences will change this point
of reference, but not always.

Neural Networks
Neural networks imitate the way neurons actually work in our brain and are a good example of how the
comparison part could be solved. But there is one little problem … … copying the human brain is simply
too complex ! The number of axon-connections (we often talk about sky-scraping numbers, even 200
million in the case of the corpus callosum) is just a tiny too much to get control over. And even if we
would be able to duplicate the brain, how would it be possible in short-term and with limited resources
to adapt certain aspects without opening Pandora’s box ?
Although I followed the road of neural networks for a small period of time, I am no longer a believer that
it is the right way to create a highly flexible intelligent digital brain. Nevertheless, not everything about
neural networks is bad ! So let’s look a little closer at neurons and where they might be useful in our
digi-brain.
The principle behind a neuron is that when the input (via dendrites) is near or equal to a predefined
value (obtained through the learning process in the nucleus) it fires via the axon. If the input is ‘far
away’ from the ‘predefined’ values, the axon does not fire. This could be described as a classical
true/false statement. By combining some neurons it is possible to create a simple ‘if … then’ statement.
Organic neurons work in an analog way and have the advantage of parallel processing resulting in an
extremely fast ‘process-execution’. A digital version is per definition digital and, if no special (expensive)
equipment is available (electronic imitations of physical neurons allowing parallel handling), the amount
of parallel processing is limited to the number of processors and separate threats supported by the
operating system and programming language on the ‘PC’. Since many neurons are generally used
simultaneously in ‘brain processing’, a PC is in the disadvantage at first glance. But, the PC has the
benefit of low cost, reliability, processing power and availability ! Furthermore, a digital neuron must not
be the exact equivalent of the organic one ! A physical neuron has evolved during million of years and
fulfills the needs for animals and humans whereas the ability to learn theoretical and abstract matter in
case of humans is, as explained later, rather a side effect of the amount of neurons present in the
human brain. It is better to understand the principles behind the organic neurons, compare this with the
current available digital versions (neural networks) and optimize them for the use in a digital brain,
preferable on a standard computing system like a PC and only there where really needed.
Another important advantage of the digital neuron is that we are not limited to a true/false state of the
axon firing (it fires or not). It’s very well possible to give extra values to the output of the axon since
dendrites are capable of handling non true/false statements. And this is exactly what needs to be done
to optimize the neuron to function on a system with less parallel but more processing capabilities (like
PC’s). A good example is that if a certain input (dendrites) will be compared to the internal table
(nucleus) and if the value is near or equal to an earlier correct line in the table, the axon-value should
be true or 1. In case the internal algorithm concludes that there are many reasons to give it a true, but
grounds are present to doubt about this (more and further errors) a state of ‘maybe’ (value 2) should be
present. If on the other hand the algorithm concludes that the nearest table value is too far (too many
errors), the axon value should be false or 0. By just adding this one state we actually make from this
single neuron a high performing piece of decision ! Of course it is very well possible to generate other
output sequences like true (4), likely (3), maybe (2), not likely (1), false (0). All sorts of output can be
generated and might be useful in separate parts of the digital brain. These examples can easily be
achieved by combining some neurons as well, but why overcomplicating things if simplification (more
reliable and less neurons) is possible !
The basic conclusion here is that the more possible output we generate the larger the logical table of
the connected neurons will be and the more processing power and memory space will be used. A
balance therefore is necessary between the output values and the hardware available.
In general, neurons are capable of pattern-recognition. That is in most cases what they do, nothing
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more or less. Speech- or visual (OCR) recognition in current neural networks already make use of this
capacity. Just the same way as neural networks are presently used in prediction software in the
financial world.
And pattern recognition is also what the brain does, always ! A mathematical equation is just a
discovered pattern. Nature does not need physics to survive, but via mathematical expressions we call
physical laws we see patterns in nature and are even able of predicting certain events. It is also the
reason why so many checklists exists and are frequently used. A checklist is nothing more than a
pattern and someone recurrently using the same checklist will just need a glimpse of the checklist to
see what is missing (in the executed pattern). As will be described later in this document, this is what
we refer to as intuition or following your instincts …
Personally I would state that for the digi-brain, a neural network future is present for the digital
cerebellum. Like the cerebellum in vertebrates the main focus of this digital cerebellum would be on
sensory perception and motor output. There is one big “BUT” in this equation : fifty percent of the
neurons present in the human brain is situated in the cerebellum and that is a stunning 50 billion
neurons and even a multiplicity of synapses ! Therefore I would split this in manageable units all with a
single function and where feasible applying other techniques to overcome this. It might even be best
only to use neural networks for those parts where pattern recognition is the only real answer like sight,
sense of hearing and even smell. In this last case better and more precise electronic techniques exist,
but the outcome would be perfect input for the neural network of smelling ! Two conditions must be
fulfilled in replacing the neural network structure and these are :
• Interaction must still be possible. The out- and input of the neurons or other techniques must
be able of ‘communicating’ with each other or whatever modus operandi would be used. A sort
of universal interface if you prefer it in programmer’s words.
• Flexibility. The system must remain flexible enough to adapt future ‘experiences’ to the existing
data and expand the area of use. Using math expressions to bounce a bal on a tennis racket is
nice, but is rather limited in fields of use. It would take a complete other expression or set of
expressions to let the same hand juggle ! So predefined expressions are to be avoided !
A typical example of why it is not good practice to copy the human brain structure as such is that not
everything is always as logical as could be ! Dyslexia is one fine example of this ! Dyslexic children
performing balancing exercises frequently helps enormously because the same brain environment is
used for both ! That is why for instance I would extract some side functions from the human cerebellum,
like attention, processing of language and music, to more specific areas outside the digital cerebellum.
A very low level process such as attention deserves an own space outside the cerebellum ! The motor
function of these features like moving lips, ear adjustments to optimize the hearing, etc would of course
reside within the cerebellum. A clear and logical design leaving few room for errors and side-effects !
The focus of this chapter was on illustrating that other possibilities than only neurons would work better,
but criticizing without offering solutions is cheap ! The next chapter therefore provides the answer …

Procedural or not ?
Introduction
The way the human brain works is not serial but parallel based, as discussed before. However to have
a procedural way of operating, some sort of sequence is required. First step a, then step b, then step c,
…, then step z. That is the general idea behind procedural behavior. If the execution of the separate
steps of the sequence is done in a parallel or serial way is actually of no importance as long as there is
a sequence in the main steps. So instead of focusing on how the system functions let’s try to find out if
the human thinking can be seen as procedural.
Thanks time and space !

Quantum computers can simultaneously handle vast amounts of processes in literally no time, but the
human brain is not a quantum computer ! The human specie is optimized for living in its habitat (earth)
and over here time and space do exist ! This explains why all physical actions are sequential by nature.
If I want to grab my glass of water I must first move my hand towards the glass no matter where my
hand is ! This ‘moving towards’ can be done in different ways and can depend on external factors like
‘both arms in plaster’ (causing non standard ways of moving towards the glass). It can even be that my
glass is on a table 5 meter away and I need to walk to the table first before I can even start reaching for
the glass. This walking also is procedural and lets put all in a nice procedure to illustrate my point :
(Step A)
While not Table_Is_Reached do
begin
lift up leg A;
place it in front of leg B;
find a stable balance;
balance on leg A;
repeat this complete procedure for leg B
End;
(Step B)
While not Hand_Is_Open_Complete do
Begin
Open_Hand_A_Litlle_More;
End;
(Step C)
While not Glass_Is_Reached do
Begin
If (Hand is Lower then Glass) then
Move_Hand_Up_A_Little;
If (Hand is Higher then Glass) then
Move_Hand_Down_A_Little;
If (Hand is Left of Glass) then
Move_Hand_A_Little_To_The_Right;
If (Hand is Right of Glass) then
Move_Hand_A_Little_To_The_Left;
End;
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(Step D)
While (Pressure_on_the_glass > This_Pressure_Would_Squeeze_the_glass) and
(Pressure_on_the_glass <= At_This_Pressure_The_Glass_will_not_Slip_out_Of_The_Hand)
do
Begin
Close_Hand_A_Little_More;
End;
It is a rather simplistic example, but understandable for all and I can get a lot of information out of it !
For instance we know the brain is capable of parallel processing but in ‘Step A’ in the example (the
moving of the legs) it would be very unwise to parallel start this process for both legs A and B, one
would just fall down ! However, it might be a good idea to overlap the separate processes in order to
advance things. I could start ‘Step B’ (the opening of the hand) a little before I reach the table and I
even could start moving the hand towards the glass (Step C) at that same time. This requires parallel
processing, but can be achieved by modern computers as well and is not exclusive for the human
brain !
However, this ‘overlapping’ is also a reason to doubt whether the thinking process is procedural or not.
It looks like the different steps as such are procedural but the execution of the diverse steps not always
is. In the above example I could first open my hand even before I start walking towards the table and it
is not impossible to even raise the hand towards ‘a good position’ also before starting to walk. Where is
the procedure here ? The procedure can be considered as a list of thinks ‘to do’ before reaching the
end point (in this case grabbing the glass) BUT the items in the list not necessary need execution in
chronological way. See it as a sort of checklist with steps to take in an interactive way and not
necessary sequential. Therefore it might be better to name this behavior “interactive procedural
behavior” !
Also the way we ‘think’ is interactive procedural, you always will have a number of steps in any thinking
process, whether it is being creative (most likely messing around with procedures), preparing a speech
in the head, reading and understanding a book or … … Try to find one thought that is otherwise, you
won’t ! Of course some thoughts can happen simultaneously or even interact and that leads us to the
final conclusion.
Conclusion : All in the human brain can be considered procedural, to be more specific interactive
procedural. One procedure must be able of controlling another and influencing it in diverse ways.
Whether it is canceling, adding information or modifying variables to mention a few options. Although it
is for an A.B. technically not required, it is advisable to allow simultaneously processing of diverse steps
in a procedure to speed up and smoothen the execution.
Scripting is the answer !

The above demonstrates that all can be considered as (interactive) procedural and on computer
systems we already have a technique capable of performing this : scripting ! Nonetheless, the current
way of scripting is not capable of processing all to obtain full interactive procedural level, but this is
rather a technical issue in how to design the scripting language, engine, interpreter and the higher
operational systems. Further in this document you will discover levels (like conscious and
subconscious) and required parameters (like hormones, belief, fear, …) to implement this in the ‘self
thinking area’.
Other advantages of scripting

Hereunder you can find some additional benefits of scripting :
• Exceptions are handled better. In a lot of neuron and non neuron ‘thinking’, the standard
behavior is pretty straight forward and easy definable but ‘the exceptions to the rule’ can often

be hard to ‘include’. Scripting has the advantage that all rules can be defined easily and even
the exceptions fit in the picture, allowing compacter “neurons”.
• Extra information. Thanks to the scripting approach it is possible to make ‘objects’ a little
stretchable and extra information regarding this ‘object’ can easily be added and used
afterwards.
• Easy modifiable. A script is easy to modify and it is uncomplicated to allow the system to alter
or create new types of base scripts without extra hard coding new ‘types’ or ‘object’.
• Safety. Scripts can easily be viewed and understood by us humans, so we have a better control
over how the system ‘thinks’ and it is even possible to make changes to certain scripts if
required.
• Instincts. Some basic instincts are required in order to let the system survive or even live.
These scripts can be written in the same language as all other scripts and no additional
programming is required to implement these instincts.
• Another tremendous advantage of scripting is that a simple pc is capable of running through
scripts extremely fast (if there is an optimized interpreter). This means less parallel
processing is required in comparison to neurons and the result essentially is the same or even
better !
• Most operating systems and programming languages support multithreading, so multiple
processes can be handled, which is of course necessary (remember : interactive procedural
behavior !) and thanks to computer networks it is also possible to spread the load over diverse
computers what will be unavoidable if visual and audio information need to be processed too.
This scripting of course implies a scripting language. The trick is to find a balance between enough
commands to comprehend all needed and avoiding commands capable of overruling certain safety
rules implemented. Safety versus flexibility versus complexity.
Since this scripting (combined with neural networks) will happen on a very low level of the
digital brain and, as clarified later in this document, lots of ‘illogical linking’ happens at diverse
levels of brain processing I can not stress enough to avoid the possibility of commands
overruling safety procedures ! This could and will lead towards serious threats for mankind !
What commands should be present and how exactly to implement depends on the requirements of the
digital brain and needs to be digged out deeper when this challenge comes in a later stadium.
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The main protector
Introduction
The last 25 years can be characterized as a sequence of innovations in the field of computer
technology. Nevertheless an artificial brain was impossible due to the lack of digital surrogates for
typical ‘human’ properties like fear, emotions, love, attention, … … both the absence of what they really
are and especially how to implement them in a digital environment are the key factors in why, at this
moment, no artificial brain is yet available.
How can a system be self-adapting and self-learning ? That is the basic question and therefore it is
imperative to look closer at concepts like fear or emotions as something we call motivation (explained
later in this document) is dependent on this. On what base will the system do one thing and the other
not ? It is impossible to do everything at once and on the other hand, it would limit the system
enormously if all needs to be predefined and ‘hard coded’ ! On what base will the system conclude that
something might be useful and another thing is not important or obsolete ? In other words why would a
system prefer mathematics over literature or otherwise ? Motivation, motivation and motivation …
The amygdala
In the brain of complex vertebrates resides the amygdala (in humans, Keep this in mind !
an almond shaped part in the brain near each ear). This small part is
A Pavlovian-reflex (described further in
our first line of defense and some name it the center of fear or
this chapter) is not the same as an
emotional center and is an element of the limbic system. Although the instinct.
amygdala exists out of several independent functional cores
(connected to the central core), it is not necessary to cover them in An instinct is a predefined type of action
depth here, only the principle is. (in the broadest sense of the word),
something one (animal or human) is
born with. Sometimes instincts are
A lot of our so-called instincts originate there (see side frame for extra
mixed with the term reflexes and that is
info). A typical example is a small child who wants to place his hand alright, as long as you keep in mind that
on a hot surface like a burning stove. If no one is in the neighborhood instincts are never Pavlovian reflexes !
to prevent this from happening, the burning of the hand (a clear Fine examples of instincts or reflexes
negative experience which is even threatening) will be stored via the are the surviving- and sucking (for
amygdala. The next time the child recognizes a source of heat with its babies) reflexes or breathing, cardio-
muscular contractions, sweating, yawn
little hand, the hand will be pulled back automatically, without burning
or even smiling.
and without hesitating !
All predefined and necessary from the
The amygdala is our first line of defense and it works extremely fast. start of the organism to survive or to
Simply stated (but not entirely correct), every signal on its way to be facilitate the social integration. This last
processed in the brain passes first through the amygdala and if part needs a little further explanation. If
not all humans would laugh the same
approved, it is released to the other parts in the brain for further
way or use sticking out the thong in
processing. In the above example of the burning hand of the little case of a ‘bah’ experience, confusion
child, it would simply take too long to process all the information in a would arise with possible (deadly)
normal way. Before the child would have 'understood' that the stove is conflicts as a result.
too hot, the hand would have been burned again.
Fantastic, isn't it ! Unfortunately the coin has two sides. As mentioned in a previous part, it is absolutely
of no importance for the thinking process where the input comes from as long as it can link (and
compare). The same applies to the amygdala and that is a different story ! Let’s take again our example
of our little child, but this time there is somebody near to prevent the burning of the hand. The adult
suddenly notices that the child is about to burn its hand and starts to shout at the child, jumps out of his
chair en strongly pulls the hand of the little child away from the stove. The blanching of this, caused by
this action, will have the same effect as if the hand would have been burned effectively and an obvious
link is added in the amygdala not to touch the stove.

Once again, fantastic because this is what we wanted to achieve ! Indeed, in this case that's true. Now
imagine there is no stove near but in this case the child is playing with its building blocks and the adult
shouting and strongly pulling the kid away from his toys is his mother, who, after a domestic quarrel,
furiously leaves the home to move in again with her mother ... ... for the child both situations are
identical and a link will be stored in the amygdala. I can assure You that this kid will no longer play
much with the building blocks in the future and that was not the purpose !
The previous example perfectly demonstrates that although there are two different ways of input
sensory (the burning of the hand) and shock (yelling) the outcome is the same. This displays the low
level the amygdala is working on …
No matter how old we are, the amygdala keeps playing an important role in our life. How many sisters
have not a panic fear for spiders because their lovely brother found it amusing to chase dear sister with
a spider in the hand or simply throwing the spider in the hair. How many people aren't extremely afraid
to drive again after a severe car crash, ...
Since one of the basic functions of the brain is linking (conscious or subconscious), it is quite
predictable that all these innocent incidents will have a reflection in other aspects in the daily life and
often where one would not expect it !
The amygdala is also of great significance in saving data in the long-term memory. Which is as such
not so surprisingly ! One may never forget that it is only recently in human history that theoretical matter
is of such meaning. Before, only surviving and reproduction was important. Fear, and that is where the
amygdala stands for, must have at least 99 percent of impact on storage of data ! If this was not the
case, life threatening situations wouldn’t be stored immediately and permanently and therefore the
future of the species would be in great danger ! It is always good practice to keep in mind that not so
long ago there where more threatening than non-threatening situations humans had to face. Nature is
hard and hostile territory and offers more hostility than friendliness. The current situation of diverse tens
of years of (almost) peace worldwide is unique and encouraging but absolutely not representative in the
search of the brain functioning ! It is rather the result of economical principles and regions in conflict
mostly are economically important or absolutely not (with the unfortunate result of no or very limited
external interference of other nations).
As discussed later on, the principle of an amygdala is mandatory and will be essential for a digital brain
as well. To avoid a complete overflow of the brain, a selection of what to process and what to drop is
needed and this selection always originates from motivation. What motivation exactly is for the brain is
at this moment not relevant and will be covered in depth later on. For now the conclusion that
motivation and the amygdala are apparently connected to each other is sufficient.
Some other amygdala related functions are aggression and most likely reproduction too. After
castration, a decrease of 30 percent of the amygdala occurs. A lot of people are also familiar with the
knowledge that castrated tomcats and he-dogs in a lot of cases become less aggressive, less active
and often even lazy. This indicates that sexuality could be an important motivator. This is not a scientific
fact as such and no complete clearance is present at this moment on this topic since this only applies to
male species and not in all cases has this been observed.
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Emotions and feelings
Some free thoughts on emotions

In order to see full clarity in the principles behind the amygdala (actually the complete limbic system), it
is of utmost importance to exactly figure out what emotions, feelings and fear are.
It is more and more accepted that emotions and feelings are different things and that feelings are the
subjective experience of an emotion. Primarily, I would like to emphasize that everything in the brain is
subjective (discussed later on). ‘A subjective expression of an emotion’ is not so well chosen therefore
and furthermore it implies that feelings are the result of emotions and that is not the case … Another
commonly used approach is the ABC method to define emotions. Personally, I prefer the description of
Robert Masters stating that emotion is psychosocially constructed, dramatized feeling.
The main question is why emotions (not feelings) are so important ? The answer is interaction. Thanks
to our capacity to physically display certain feelings (that is what emotions stand for, nothing more or
less), others can better react. Someone with an angry face will be recognized allover the world as
someone to avoid. Someone crying will need some comforting, etc. It helps social (non-verbal)
communication and it comes in handy when raising children. A good parent will notice the small (or
expressive) changes in a child’s face or voice and will be able to relieve the burden of the child.
Whether emotions are the consequences of feelings or they arise simultaneously (axons can fire to
many dendrites at once) is a discussion I am not willing to perform and it is not mandatory in the case of
an A.B..
What is for sure is that there must be a feeling to have an emotion. In conjunction to the A.B. it is wise
to keep in mind that emotions (remember : the physical expression of feelings) could come in handy to
better understand the thoughts and feelings of the A.B. at that moment, but they are optional ! Yes, an
A.B. can work perfectly without the existence of emotions ! Feelings on the other hand are obligated
and the rest of this chapter is dedicated to this subject.
Since most people, even professional ones, mix the terms emotions and feelings constantly referring to
feelings, in the future of this document I will often use the term ‘emotions’ to make things a little easier
to understand and more readable. Know that, technically to be correct, an emotion actually needs a
physical expression and then forget it, it will work confusing otherwise …
Fear
It would be simply impossible to talk about feelings without first touching 'fear'. In order to survive, it is
of the utmost importance that fear exists, it is, as earlier described, our main protector !
Without fear you would cross roads without checking, pet a lion in the zoo or even tell your boss what
you really think of him or her !
Caution is also a form of fear. It is the balance between fear and its opponent trust. Someone full of
trust is not cautious at all and will often do stupid things. Simply because 100 percent trust is the same
as the lack of fear (not-fear) ! Ask people who are credulous and have a little too much faith in other
people. Time after time they get a smack in the face ! On the other hand, someone with absolute fear
(not-trust) will collapse and display unpredictable behavior.
An important conclusion here is that not trust but caution (combination fear and trust) creates most
chances in surviving.
If we are unable to link something we get afraid. That is the main reason why new things frighten us
and after a while the fear most of the time weakens. It is also the reason why faith is so important and

should be respected, as we will cover later on. One should be able to link experiences to something
and whether that ‘something’ is correct or not is less important, just the possibility to link it gives a
comforting feeling. Autistic people display this even better than words can. Try something new (out of
the pattern) and they usually become hysteric !
When looking a little closer at the primary emotions (or feelings) like for example Plutchik lists (anger,
fear, sadness, joy, disgust, surprise, curiosity and acceptance), something interesting comes to the
surface. Anger, sadness and joy are essentially sub forms of fear ! Disgust and surprise are special and
will be discussed later on and curiosity and acceptance are both ways of steering the fear-trust balance
(also explained later). This surprised me and after digging even deeper I discovered something of the
greatest importance in the realization of an A.B. …
Feelings, the derivatives of fear

Every feeling is a derivative of fear, both positive and negative feelings !
Let’s start with some 'negative' samples :
 Sense of guilt. Fear that the own efforts (or the lack of) caused something that could have
been avoided.
 Sense of shame. Fear of what other people will or would think about us.
 Sense of inferiority. Fear that one actually is inferior to another person.
 Envy or jealousy. Fear to lose certain attainments or attainments others achieved are not
preserved for oneself. Notice that in this case a partner (person) can be an attainment for some
people !
 Greed, miserliness. Fear of deficit.
 Dissatisfaction. Fear something is not 'good' enough.
 Sadness and anger. Fear that one is done wrong. Anger is often used as an easy way to avoid
rejection or psychological pain too. Get them first before they get you !
The 'positive' feelings are, not remarkably, derivatives of trust (or not-fear) :
 Happiness. Trust that 'justice' is done for oneself.

 Self-confidence. Trust in the own capacities.
 Satisfaction and joy. Trust that things are the way they are 'supposed to be'.
 Self respect. Trust one is 'good' the way he/she is right now.
 Superiority sense. Trust one is better than another.
 Generosity. Trust there is enough available.
Notice that some feelings are actually combinations of fear or not-fear and the above list is only there
for demonstrative purposes. A second remarkable thing we detect looking a little closer is that some
feelings (like generosity) are traditionally taken as a part of the character and not looked at as feelings
... ... and that is correct. The major fears and not-fears (feelings) in fact are the key modelers in one’s
personality ! The good news here is that these fears can be changed, so yes, it is very well possible to
modify or influence one’s character (both conscious and subconscious) as long as the person self is
willing to cooperate in this process. This explains why brainwashing will not work if someone is not
willing to believe the ‘new information’ or this ‘new information’ is too much in conflict with other values.
When you look closer, you will even see that a man having less emotions (or feelings) than a woman is
nothing more than a fable. Fear (or not-fear) remains fear, no matter what gender. Due to historical and
sociological reasons men try more to suppress these feelings or often even don't know how to handle
them (everything is better than being called a woes).
Just imagine that a couple of thousand years ago, a man would have had a guilt sense during hunting
__________________________________________________

every time he needed to kill 'that sweet and lovely little animal' in order to survive ! Women on the other
hand (in that same period) were benefiting from having 'better developed' feelings (and emotions). This
was necessary to raise the children and to obtain a better social contact with other 'moms'.
What we describe as empathy is nothing more or less than a (conscious or even subconscious)
simulation process of the feelings the other person is going through. That is the reason why someone
with few empathic abilities is always someone having problems with the own emotions or feelings (as
described earlier, typical for the male gender) ... … it is hard to link if no available information is there !
These empathy equations will certainty be one of the toughest nuts to crack for military application of a
digital brain. If the focus is on suppressing the own feelings, few empathic capabilities will be present.
This creates cold-blooded soldiers who are willing to do the dirty work but who become a possible
threat at the same time with less control over. Not to mention the possible side effects in the long run on
both the own mental state as well as possible destructive behavior towards the environment caused by
suppressing feelings. On the other hand, if the empathic capabilities are too well defined, the robot or
whatever carrier of the A.B. will not be capable of killing … … and that is something most military
commanders wouldn’t appreciate ! Two workarounds are possible. The first one is creating multi-
personalities, which is of course dangerous and hard to control what personality will become the more
dominant. The second option is my favorite and is something human is incapable of : adding a third
‘conscious’ level, perfectly externally controllable. This would be comparable with a soldier temporarily
under hypnosis, but without the capacity of waking up out of this hypnotic state and without being
conscious of what it is doing at that particular moment ! The main advantage of this approach is that the
system is not aware of anything and, in worst case, it will be experienced like a bad dream.
The closer a feeling resides on the side of absolute fear (zero trust), the more we tend to call it a phobia
and the more chance there is a link stored in the amygdala. And no, removing the amygdala (the center
of fear) does not create 'fearless people' ! Around 1960, a lot of research was done in this field and the
main conclusion was that people with a disconnected amygdala lived the life of a vegetable. This may
seem strange at first, but in the chapter of motivation we will cover this in depth. For now it is enough to
memorize that motivation is driven by feelings and, as mentioned above, feelings are derivatives of fear
...
Disgust and surprise

As mentioned before these two basic emotions/feelings are special. Disgust is an all or nothing feeling.
Either you are disgusted by something or you are not ! Being a little disgusted is not possible. It is also
the only basic feeling which is not needed in order to obtain a fully working A.B.. For humans it is
fundamental a protection system. Food tasting or smelling ‘bad’ or a room smelling terribly (often
indicating the presence of unhealthy bacteria) will be avoided. The throw-up reflex, characterizing
disgust, will protect you from eating contaminated food.
It sometimes happens one saying to the other ‘You disgust me !’, but this is more a way of expressing
the degree of dissatisfaction than it has to do with the feeling of disgust. No specific reflexes, typical for
disgust, will be present …
Surprise on the other hand is special since it can be both a positive and negative feeling. Surprise as
such can be best considered as a layer between unexpected input and fear. Surprise is necessary for
an A.B. since it is the way the system will be able to react to unexpected changes. We live on pattern
recognition (what else do neurons) and we always expect something to happen. Most of the time this
expectation will be the continuation of what was happening at that moment (the pattern). Standing on a
dance floor with the music up loud, one supposes (subconsciously) the next moment the music will still
be loud. If something happens to the dj’s equipment and the music all at sudden stops, one is surprised
! If I whisper during a conversation and unexpectedly raise my voice, you will be near having a heart
attack ! If you come back to your hometown after 20 years and see new buildings and roads, you will be
surprised ! If you meet a friend in the afternoon, you did see in the morning, with a complete different
haircut (short instead of long hair), you will be surprised. The same applies to fusion cooking, the latest

trend in haut-cuisine, if you are served a green ice-cream smelling and tasting like strawberries, you will
be surprised ! The best humor is the one ending unforeseen.
Surprise is one of the main ways the attention is focused on something specific (possibly threatening) !
This principle is the same for both humans and lots of animals and runs on a very low level in the brain.
In the previous paragraph I stated that surprise could be both positive as negative, but this is not
entirely correct. The outcome of surprise can be either condition but surprise as such is stateless.
Surprise is also the driving element behind the well-known ‘fight-or-flight’ response.
But what about confusion ? Is that not pretty much the same as surprise ? No ! Confusion is nothing
more than opposite and conflicting information available for the brain. Nevertheless confusion is often
indirectly the result of surprise. If you walk in a wood and all at the sudden a bear passes by, this will
cause surprise. If two different people at that moment give conflicting information like “Drop on the
ground and lay still” and “Run for your life”, there will be confusion (“which of both is accurate?”) ! So it
is not truly the surprise causing the confusion but two or more conflicting data in how to react on the
surprise. In the brain cause and consequence are not always easy to point out since many neurons can
fire in a split second and most of the time the output becomes new input !
Curiosity and acceptance

Both “curiosity” and “acceptance” regulate fear. By nature one is afraid of new experiences and these
are considered as threatening. The fear-slider will be positioned on the side of fear. If there was no
mechanism to move this slider towards trust (not-fear), it would be impossible to overcome this and as
a result life would be impossible ! Both humans and animals constantly are exposed to new
experiences and fear alone would work contra-productive.
Go near an animal not familiar with you and it will be afraid of approaching you. If you sit there long
enough and are gentile to the animal, after a while it will make small moves towards you, slow and
suspicious. The smallest move of your part will result in surprise and the animal will run away or at least
take some steps back. Eventually the animal might overcome this first natural fear, thanks to curiosity,
and see you as non-threatening. This last will especially be the case if a (food) reward is given. After a
while the animal will be familiar with you (a pattern is established) and neither curiosity nor fear will still
be necessary.
“Acceptance” is also a fear regulator and is the main and fastest regulator towards trust. Someone
accepting a certain situation will be without fear for that situation ! Religious people like Buddhists
believe that there is a reason for everything. A situation causing an awful lot of fear for most people, like
a violent hostage, will cause less fear for those accepting that this could be the end and especially if a
positive image of an afterlife is present, like for our Buddhist friends. Forgiveness is nothing more or
less than acceptance and it is the reason why victims of severe crimes able to forgive the criminal,
finally are able to continue with their lives. Most feelings or emotions are, as seen before, derivatives of
fear and if we take away the fear (acceptance), the emotion will no longer be a spoilsport since the
emotion is simply eliminated !
“Acceptance” has another meaning as well, a more personal one ! Everybody wants to be accepted, the
opposite of rejection. The reason I mention this here is because it is also important for the A.B.. This
form of acceptance is a result of the punishment and rewarding system we all have. Not being accepted
feels similar as doing something the wrong way (bad/punishment). A good description to make it even
more understandable is that rejection (opposite of acceptance) is a sort of psychological slap in the
face. Ignoring people during conversations is more or less rejecting people and can truly hurt ! The self-
image will suffer from it and anyone manipulating someone else will, consciously or subconsciously,
uses this acceptance and rejection as powerful weapons, always ! Since it is impossible to have an A.B.
__________________________________________________

without fear, rewarding- and punishment-system (motivation) the chances the A.B. will suffer from this
drawback is extremely high ! It is important to understand that humans will for a long time not accept an
A.B. (fear, religion, superiority feeling, …) and during the ‘education’ of the A.B. this topic must be
addressed so the A.B. will be aware that they didn’t cause this ! The tutors also need to exceed this and
accept and nourish the A.B. with this in mind ! I presume it is not the intention to create digital Hiltlers,
Mussolinis or serial killers !
After reading this, it is obvious both regulators operate at a very low level and are mandatory in an A.B.
Pain
One surprising aspect in the list of basic emotions of Plutchik is the absence of pain. Physical pain has
all ingredients to be considered as an emotion, even a basic emotion. But there is also something we
refer to as emotional or psychological pain.
Those reading this document are without doubt above average intelligence, it is not easy matter and my
writing can hardly be compared with brilliant writers such as Shakespeare or Tom Clancy. So, if I would
say, looking you straight in the eyes, that you are really stupid and have absolutely no idea of what you
are reading, it will hurt you (possibly also make you angry or sad). This feeling is an emotional pain and
for all clarity, it is not the result of anger or sadness as other processes raise those feelings. It would be
fantastic if we could avoid these emotional pains in our A.B. since it is the cause of possible problems.
The bad news is that an A.B. without these emotional pains would not be able to function in an
intelligent way ! The reason for this latter conclusion is that pain is always a warning signal and results
in avoiding something. If you hurt your foot, the pain will be the warning signal something is wrong and
you will avoid walking on it as long as the pain remains. The same applies to emotional pain. The
hurting of my fictive sentence of you being stupid will be considered as a warning signal that you may
be doing something ‘wrong’ and you will avoid getting the same comments from me in the future !
Emotional pain is one of the most important motivators ! If I would keep on repeating my commentary,
you would actually start avoiding me !
It will hardly surprise one that the way we handle physical and emotional pain in the brain is very similar
and both make use of the same areas. This is one of the reasons self-mutilation exists. Some consider
hurting and pain as ‘pleasant’ (Sado-Masochism, endorphin ‘addiction’ like in runners high) or even
relieving (self-mutilation). Remember, in the brain it is all about linking and comparison ! Combine this
with the ultimate goal of feeling ‘good’ and strange permutations like self-mutilation are in some cases
the outcome … … this proofs once more that experiences are the most important factor in defining
one’s life !
Aggression
Although aggression is not an emotion (anger is), it is wise to cover it here. If an intelligent system has
no way of defending itself from external attacks, it will not live long ! One can argue with a bear but it is
to be expected that the bear will not respond well on this ! In the well-known fight-or-flight reflex in either
case the system will temporarily require more energy available than normal. For humans this will be a
momentarily rise of adrenaline.
In case the system concludes that ‘fight’ is the procedure to follow, aggression will be the result.
Aggression causes the system to focus on a single thing and, dependent on the degree of aggression,
it will block out the thinking system as a normal reaction since all attention is directed towards ‘the fight’.
Real aggressive people often do things at that specific moment they regret later and insanity is a legal
term for the point where aggression blocks out all ‘normal thinking’.
Even though the first reflex might be not to implement a similar function in the A.B., it is not so wise !
Anger (as all emotions) is an important motivator. At certain moments the system must be angry at itself
in order to deal with fear. It will be the anger that will lead to action and this action will allow new
experiences and these can be the cause of overcoming the fear (gaining trust – believe). As explained

elsewhere in this document, learning theoretical matter is also a sort of experience and if the system
would not have the ability to become angry it would be fully dependent on external input in order to gain
trust for overcoming new experiences (except for curiosity, which is limited in time as motivator).
Since aggression is hormone-driven, it is best implemented in the A.B. as a global variable. Is it

possible to make the system better stress-resistant than animals and humans by not using a stack
approach (placing one little annoyance on top of the other (increasing the var) until the point of outburst
is reached and aggression is the result) ? The answer is yes and no ! Dependent on the requirements it
is possible. An A.B. implemented in a robot used for peacekeeping missions in hostile territory will
require a higher level of aggression in order to defend itself than for example an A.B. used for industrial
purposes.
The time-factor will play an important role as well. How long will the system remain angry about a
certain issue ? Two aspects are determinant in this :
• The reference in the associated object in the brain will remain active until other experiences
diminish the anger associated with the object. If you reflect on a specific negative experience it
will still make you angry nevertheless it might have happened several years ago. Since all in the
brain is linking and comparison this will occur automatically if the A.B. is designed on the
fundamentals in this document.
• How long will the system be angry at the moment ? Sometimes we remain angry for a minute
and other times it takes hours or days to calm down. Attention and severity are the key players
in this. If your partner is cheating on you, chances are higher that this will have your attention
for a longer period than when a minor traffic incident caused some anger. In most cases
although, if the attention is drawn to something else the anger will stop. If you are having a
quarrel and someone is ringing at the door, the attention will (temporarily) be redrawn from the
argue and the anger will decrease. Notice that if the point of real aggression is reached, the
doorbell will likely even enlarge the anger and could lead towards a snapping point.
Some simple techniques can help in managing this for the A.B. without loosing the benefits of getting
angry. The first one is that per certain time period, it might be wise to diminish the anger factor for the
topic by a specific number. This will cause the system to deal with anger in a better way than humans
do ! A second good trick is if the systems ‘aggression variable’ reaches a certain value for a certain
amount of time, the reflex could be to either start diminishing it automatically or forcing the system to
focus on other things, also decreasing the value. Communication can play an important factor as well
since it will (in most cases) create experiences decreasing the anger value.
It is important to implement some dimming mechanisms since it is virtually impossible to create an A.B.
without subconscious level and, as described elsewhere in this document, the subconscious level will
deal with the anger too ! This will happen in a rather uncontrolled way and therefore could lead to
results one prefers not to have for an A.B. ! This will turn out to be one of the main challenges if an A.B.
will be used for military reasons. The aggression factor will need to be high in order to do some ‘dirty
work’ but it is the same amount of aggression required to damage the ‘own troops’, something to be
avoided !
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Believe, the driving force !
Introduction
It literally took me several years to overcome this one. At first glance, believe, faith (not-fear) and fear
(not-faith) pretty much look the same ! In all my previous models of an A.B., I ended up with fear as the
absolute basic where all the rest was build-upon and everything seemed to work fine as you can see
throughout this document so far. But how could fear be steered and what about believe ? Two items I
needed to fit into my scheme and no matter how I tried, there was always something missing or there
was a contradiction !
I simply didn't see it …
Believe, always believe …

I should have seen it sooner ! Many involved in unraveling emotions, believe that emotions express
sorts of beliefs or appearances and I already knew that this was not entirely correct ! Emotions, or even
better the underlying feelings, are derivates of fear, as explained earlier. On the other hand believe had
something to do with it, but what ? Then, all at the sudden, all pieces of the puzzle fell together !
Believe and not fear is the absolute fundament in our thinking process ! Why are you afraid of
something ? Because you believe it will harm you in some way. You are afraid of crossing a road
blindfolded because you are afraid you will die ! So, if I can make you believe the road is clear and will
remain clear for at least 24 hours, the fear will decrease and you will cross the road !
As mentioned earlier in this document, religions try to offer answers to 'difficult' questions and problems.
In this way believe provides faith (not-fear). Believe is the determinant factor in moving the slider of fear
from 0 (non-fear or trust) up to 100 percent (max fear or phobia). Of course experiences help in this, but
those experiences are based on subjective matter as well and what else than believe is subjective
matter …
Molested or abused little children only at 'older' age have severe mental problems. Remember that for
our calibration-system first experiences work as calibration-point and children are not only impressed by
'mature' people but they believe that what is done by these people is the 'right thing' (non-fear or trust).
This is the hypnotic phase we will discus later on. Only at 'older' age they realize that the way they have
been treated was not “right’ and the mental struggle begins.
People facing severe depression have the impression (believe) the social system (whatever that is), is
not longer capable of offering help and they somehow feel rejected by this system. Suicide attempts are
often made to get attention in the hope (again believe) the disbelieve is not correct (a cry for help), but
when one accepts (remember, the no-fear creator) that the social system can not longer be of
assistance, then a serious suicide attempt with high potential of success will follow. In these cases the
surrounding often is surprised (something out of the pattern, as seen before) and frequently say that the
person was feeling a lot better recently, calmer and even relaxed and looked in full control and happier
… … no wonder since the fear-slider was more towards trust than fear. Trust that suicide would be the
outcome to all problems !
Even the ground rules of mathematics, basis of most exact sciences, are axioms and this is nothing
else than believe ! Nature does not need math to do what it does ! Science is our way of finding
patterns for natural phenomenons and thereby sometimes being able of making predictions. With just a
little imagination it would be correct to state that science functions as an extra sense thanks to the
capacity of interpreting input that is not directly noticeable to the other senses …
If believe would not be the driving force behind all thinking, it would conflict with the statement that

everything in the brain is an interpretation of facts (as discussed later). The way we mainly interpret is
indeed dependent of what we believe at that moment ! The following sample will demonstrate this
perfectly : the discussion a few hundred years ago whether the earth was round or not. Evidence was
there but convictions too and it took an enormous effort to overcome those … … and what else than
belief is a conviction ?
Notice as well that lots of scientific proof originates from the belief of a single soul and the determination
to prove his/her right … … whether we like it or not, belief and interpretation absolutely dominate our
lives more than anything else, regardless of what fields of expertise we are into (innovation, exact
science, sociology, philosophy, psychology, theology, mathematics, …) !
Hope is a crucial factor in the thinking process too. People living in the barest and worst conditions,
having hope, sometimes do amazing things ! And hope is nothing else than the belief that there is a
possibility that the circumstances will change. Suicidal people give up hope and therefore they give up
the believe that their life might change for the good (whatever this may be) and are willing to unplug …
The three states of believe and doubt

Believe essentially exists out of three states : believe, neutral state and disbelieve. You believe
something or you don’t or you have no opinion on that subject ! You cannot believe or disbelieve a little
bit ! This neutral state can be : no opinion, not interested, no information available, etc. and the question
is whether this should be the default state. In the chapter “What about hormones ?”, I show the need of
‘trust’ for small children in order to learn and this indicates that during the pre-juvenal phase the best
default state is ‘believe’. But more about this in that chapter.
Since believe is the fundament of all, it is incorporated in everything we store and I will discus the
storing-topic in the chapter “Memory”.
But what about doubt ? I can believe or disbelieve something and have doubts at the same time ! Does
this imply that believe is rather a slider as fear is ? No ! Doubting is a process were believe is a state ! If
conflicting ‘reliable’ information is available one often is forced to choose between the two or more
possibilities. Not knowing what to believe is actually ‘doubting’. In order to make the ‘final’ decision what
to believe, in most cases, we will check the credibility of the source and this is not done in an objective
way. For instance if one source is a respected person (believe again) and the other is totally unknown,
chances are high that the statement of the respected person will be taken as correct. Subjective
because even respected people make mistakes ! Notice that the doubt will be more intense the higher
the reliability of the diverse sources is. If both father and mother argue and the child is forced to choose
one opinion and no previous data is available of unreliability of either parent, the child almost certainly
will end up indecisive !
Another factor is the amount of available information. During my 20 years’ search I often faced the
problem of having non or very few information on specific topics. Not because no information was
available but because, as mentioned in the preface, I wanted to exclude the amount of external
influence as much as possible. In that way I was forced of being both creative and skeptical at once.
With a limited amount of information one must pick routes to follow and build further on these routes
resulting in a network of possibilities. All these mini-routes are actually believe and I must admit that
sometimes they can be strange in nature and far-fetched ! Once you believe that a certain path will not
lead towards answers, the path is dropped. If future information suddenly arouses the belief that with
the new information the old path could lead towards answers, the old path will be immediately
reopened. The same also applies for two believable paths conflicting with each other !
Lots of scientists have the tendency of starting new ‘far-fetched’ paths with a state of unbelief and I am
sure that if they had the initial reflex of belief-until-proven-otherwise they would advance faster … …
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this is actually what we name being open-minded and creativity flouts on this.
Doubting is also often used in sentences as a polite way of saying “I don’t believe it for a moment !” and
has nothing to do with doubt as such !

The diverse forms of consciousness
Introduction
Traditionally there are four forms of consciousness : The consciousness, subconsciousness, upper-
and collective consciousness. The last two are mostly ways of gathering or receiving 'external
information' and their role is not so important to create a standalone artificial brain. Only in further steps
where more 'special communication' is required this comes into the picture.
Whether there is an upper consciousness or not is also something I wish to leave in the middle. As
mentioned before, it is not mandatory in this case. Therefore only the consciousness and
subconsciousness are covered in detail in the following chapter.
Consciousness
Some free thoughts

Although it is a habitual wisdom that consciousness cannot be defined, I would like to break this
tradition (and not from a philosophical point of view). First of all, it is too important for an A.B. not to
define it and secondly, it is really quite simple to define the boundaries wherein the consciousness
‘resides’.
One of the typical qualities usually linked to the consciousness is subjectivity. Later on in this document
I demonstrate that every input results in perception and therefore is always subjective by nature ! In
other parts I will also demonstrate that other classic qualia like sapience actually relay as much on the
subconsciousness (or even more sometimes) than on the consciousness. Secondly let’s not forget that
sapience is always subjective inherently. Some consider the things preached by ‘respected people’ as
holy and extremely sapient while others might find it very dumb, containing no wisdom at all. Once
again perception, but that is for later on …
Traditionally the consciousness is divided in P- (Phenomenal) and A- (Access) consciousness.

Respectively they stand for experience (P) and (the A-part) accessibility and behavior-control. Events
out of these two areas are described as subconscious events.
If one holds on to these criteria, not only is it confusing, but also no progress can be made in the
understanding of the brain. For example, every experience (P) is based upon decisions (A) and all
decisions (A) are based upon experience (P), an endless loop is born ! And what about dreaming ? The
information the dream is based upon and the processing (internal thoughts) are both Access and the
experience of the dream (ask someone waking up in sweat after a nasty dream) is Phenomenal, but
during dreaming the consciousness is not existent (at least not in the dreaming part) !
In order to demonstrate my main objection in following this approach, allow me to pick a last case. If I
create a small neural network existing out of a few neurons to recognize simple shapes, according to
the definitions there is a consciousness ?!? In the learning phase of this small network the learning as
such is Access while the storing of the information is sort of experience and is Phenomenal. This last is
especially correct when I would automate the learning process. This is very well possible since I can
make the computer generate shapes automatically and can compare the network output with the input
shape. Running the network in executive mode, the experience is the input of the dendrites and is
Phenomenal and the reflection if the input comes near a predefined value (error level is low) is taking a
decision and is therefore Access !
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Another approach towards answers

To facilitate this conscious-subconscious problem, I took a different approach in defining both and
remarkably, it works a lot better ! The main question in this equation is why a conscious and
subconscious are required ? One may not forget that we are the result of millions of years of evolution
and it is obvious that only improvements last (more chances in surviving for the specie). Since humans
of 5.000 years ago had, globally taken, the same brain as we do today, there must be a surviving
function integrated. And there is, as described in the next chapter.
Conscious versus subconscious

People working with artificial neural networks always need a learning- and executive phase for the
network. With just a little imagination one could state that the conscious is the learning input, while the
subconscious leans more towards the executive phase. Although this is not entirely correct (described
later on), it is a good starting point.
As you will discover in a few minutes, both conscious and subconscious are actually identical but
operate on another level. Both gather their information (mostly) from the same sources and process this
in the exact same way. It is vital to look deeper into this. Simply stated, the subconscious’ only purpose
is to relieve the conscious. The conscious’ level primary role is to maximize the surviving chances
through fast detection and reacting on immediate danger.
A typical example of this is someone conducting a car. More than fifty All input is experience !
percent of the time this will be done on 'automatic pilot' and the driving
itself just happens without real (conscious) thinking. Changing gears, If we look a little closer at
turning the wheel, using the blinker and even brake a little from time to experience, we notice that all input
is actually experience because
time. All these maneuvers are pretty complex as such (ask a rookie), but
notwithstanding what sense or
a more experienced driver still has time left to listen to some music and senses is or are the receptor(s) of
even to pick the noose, all at the same time ! It's obvious that these the input, if considered important, it
processes run in the background (via the subconscious). Only when the will be stored. If in the future similar
vehicle right in front of 'our ace' suddenly brakes really hard, the events happen, this will strengthen
consciousness will demand all attention and those processes that are not the link petit-a-petit or immediately
in the brain and will often be used
important at that moment (listening to the music en picking the noose) will
as input as well as in solving the
be killed. The consciousness analyzes fast the possible options like : will ‘problem’.
hard braking be sufficient without the car following me bumping into me or
do I have to swerve left or right to avoid an accident ? Some processes The base for potential storing in the
like how to shift gears will still be done by the subconscious, but the brain is always “meaning”. Is
consciousness will possibly consider shifting back one or more gears to something important (for this
person) or not ? This meaning
even attain a greater deceleration and basically give this command if once again is based upon chances
needed. As we will see later on, only automated processes can run in the of surviving, rewarding,
background (subconscious). appreciation, punishment and
pleasure.
A rookie will miss the experience and reflexes causing a possible
overflow of processes for the consciousness, since much more of these processes need to be executed
by the consciousness (maybe even how to switch gears). In this case it is more likely that pure luck will
be the cause if a crash is avoided.
An important supposition is that the consciousness can handle fewer processes at the same time than
the subconscious because conscious processes use a lot more resources in terms of memory usage
and load. Someone studying hard for a couple of hours will be exhausted (almost all on conscious
level) while working a complete day at work in familiar matter (routine and on subconscious level) will
be less fatigued or maybe even bored. In the case of a ‘normal’ day, the total number of performed
tasks might even be tremendously higher, but the load is significantly lower. This indirectly indicates
that concentration is energy consuming and as most species, humans are energy saving creatures
(more chances in surviving), so this distinction between conscious and subconscious makes sense !

Experience, in the broadest sense of the word, and only experience is capable of transferring a process
from the conscious to the subconscious level ! This is the case because only experience gives the
signal that it is save to do the transfer and that the full attention of the consciousness is no longer
needed to operate this process. In the human brain this is often referred to as Long Term Potentiation
(LTP). Understanding complex theoretical concepts (what we usually call education) is not different
from the previous and can also be classified under the concept of experience, how absurd this might
look at first. Before you will have the insight in the matter, you will try a lot of links, compare them and
decide if the result is correct (again the tree basic functions of the brain). This is done using the well-
known method of 'trial and error' and is exactly the same as learning to ride the bike, walk and blow the
noose or any other 'physical' activity. Even the way emotions are handled operates mainly on
experience. A child experiencing that bad behavior leads to attention and getting new stuff, will for sure
use the same approach in the future and become unmanageable and a real pain in the ass. Why ?
• Well, in the brain we link and this linking is done in a creative way during the learning curve.
The brain is capable of creating its own mini-neural networks and if the outcome of one of these
mini-networks is considered positive, will be used again in the near future. The internal
connections in such a mini-network and how many neurons are used will differ for each
individual and is not important, only the outcome. The brain is result based ! The more this mini-
network will be used, the more stable the links in this network will become and after a while
something called long term potentiation will occur and the mini-network will be stored for a real
long time in the long term memory (as described later). All these mini-networks (or call it
procedures) can and will be used in future linking as well. Just look at someone learning basic
mathematics to understand this. First all 10 digits (0..9) must be learned. Once this is done,
simple equations will be used with those same 10 digits as input and after a while these simple
equations will even be used in other more complex equations. Step by step and if one of these
steps is not stable, the chances in failure increase drastically (the reason why so many do not
understand mathematics).
• In the digital brain, it would be good practice to keep this in mind and preserve a space where
‘neurons’ or ‘scripts’ can ‘play’ (in the future of this document I will mix these terms neuron and
script but actually referring to the same). Also adding a counter and last used date will be
necessary. If the neuron or chain of neurons is repeated frequently (high counter value) with
success, the procedure is ready to be stored in the long-term memory. If a certain neuron or
chain of neurons is not used for a long period of time, it can be safely deleted to preserve space
and memory and keep the system fast. In the play-area of the digital brain (a little like the frontal
lobe) two things need to be done on neuron level : how many times is this neuron used in the
learning process (a second counter) and the possibility to leave a certain path of neurons out of
the chain. The first one (counter) is needed to indicate the creative system (what else is
creating new patterns) which is the preferred way or path to follow. The higher the number of
the diverse counters the more likely that it is the right path. Nevertheless, if no way would be
present to deviate from the ‘existing’ path of high counter values, no other or new paths could
be taken and the learning would remain very primitive without improvements or simplifications
being possible since only the ‘highest’ path could be followed.
The principle I introduce here can be applied to all brain-storage, and is not only limited to the
‘creativity center’. The digidala (digital amygdala) will be the key-factor in which step the
numbering on a particular script should be increased. Bad or good experiences will have a
significant higher step than ‘neutral’ experiences. In some cases, like real threatening
experiences, the increase should even be maximal on first experience. The more neutral (less
interesting) something is, the lower the step has to be. Ever tried to teach someone something
he or she is not interested in ? Only if the fear (yes amygdala interference) is present that not
learning this ‘uninteresting’ stuff will lead to a ‘bad’ thing, like failing for an exam, it will even be
virtually impossible to memorize it. That is why I am a great advocate of teaching creatively,
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with a vivid imagination. That way more pupils will be interested in the matter and better results
will follow automatically.
In psychology the Pavlov-reflex is often used to demonstrate how many times we actually don’t use the
consciousness but rather float on associations (links). Let’s retell the story for those who never heard it
before. Pavlov was a scientist who, a long time ago, rang every time a bell just before he gave his dog
some meat. After a while, the dog was slavering hearing the bell, even when no meat was present.
What Pavlov actually proved is that the above theorem of the experience transferred to the
subconscious is indeed correct ! In the beginning there was the bell, the meat and no slaver. There
simply was no link. The linking occurred at the moment the experience of the dog (every time the bell
rang, meat was there) was sufficient. To make a dog slaver when it actually can notice on a conscious
level via vision or smell that there is no meat, this process must be running in the background
(subconscious). Only when the dog figures out that there actually is no meat (and this can take a while
and is based on hope trough experience), the slaver will stop.
An interesting side conclusion of this Pavlov test is that dogs obviously also use the system of
consciousness and subconscious ...
Self-awareness (self-conscious)
All well, but what about the self-awareness, which we could also describe as self-consciousness ?
Although it is almost impossible to support this with enough evidence, personally I am a great advocate
of the thought that this is a logical side effect of the human capacity to link, compare and decide,
combined with the amount of neurons available.
In psychology the red dot on the forehead of a child and a mirror are used to demonstrate the existence
of the self-awareness (the mirror-test). A young child whose self-awareness is not yet present will touch
the red dot of the ‘child’ in the mirror. Children with sufficient self-consciousness will touch the red spot
on the own forehead while looking in the mirror.
This test was performed on a number of animals as well and on some like dolphins and elephants it had
the same outcome as on humans. The remarkable is that only the brain capacity (nl. number of
neurons) seems to be the decisive factor to create self-awareness …
If an adult, never using a mirror (and not knowing what a mirror’s purpose is), would be placed in the
same situation, you would actually observe the same thing ! First, there would be the spontaneous
effect of looking at the reflection as it were a stranger (no information in the brain is yet available
associated with the ‘image’ of this person). Once this link is established, the person will discover that
the reflection is not ‘real’ and that by moving the reflection moves exactly the same way. After a while,
especially after touching oneself, the link will be made that the other person in the mirror must be
oneself ! As a result an “image” of oneself will be stored in the brain and will be used to compare with in
the future. And yes, after a while, if a red dot will be spotted on the forehead (a difference), this person
will touch it and not the one on the mirror …
Personally I find the red dot test rather simplistic and not real proof of self-awareness and even less of
self-consciousness ! Nevertheless, it is proof of the fact that the brain is capable of complex linking,
comparison and decision, nothing more or less ! Just look around and you will find very few people who
actually are self-aware and even less who are self-conscious ! Selfish yes, self-aware no … … two
different things !
Later on, the topic on ego (selfishness) will be covered in depth, but to evade the statement ‘how can
one be selfish if there is no self-awareness ?’, just think of a mother having a triplet or a maternity with
multiple newborns. If one of these babies is hungry the crying will start. Now let’s take the example that
more than one of them is hungry and only one feeding bottle is available. Do you think one of the
hungry babies will stop crying and spontaneously will say ‘I insist, please feed the crying baby to my left
side first please !’? I don’t think either … … so “selfishness” is inherent from the bitter start, self-
awareness not (if we are willing to accept the concept of self-awareness).

So self-awareness should not be taken in consideration in the blueprint of the artificial brain but should
create itself if the digital brain is well designed and if the brain capacity is sufficient.
Creativity, dreams, imagination and thinking

A major and essential part of the working of the conscious and subconscious are without doubt the
simulation processes.
Let’s give an example to describe this. When I would ask you to close your eyes and to imagine that a
large fat and deadly spider is crawling on your arm, it probably would make you shudder and maybe
even raise goose bumps. But there is actually no spider ! One can hardly state that this is a Pavlov-
reflex since you probably have no real repetitive experience in walking around with spiders on your
arms.
It appears that the brain is perfectly capable of simulating processes. This is not a nice gadget, but
bitter necessity !
In a previous chapter we demonstrated that conscious processes are transferred to the subconscious
part of the brain once a routine is established (experience). This is only partially correct as described
below.
We also know that the brain is restricted in the amount of processes it can handle simultaneously, in
other words the brain’s capacity is limited. To speed up the transfer routine and to preserve the
conscious for 'urgent processes' (historically more chance to survive) the subconscious uses its own
capability to simulate. This is what we refer to as dreaming. Enough existing studies reveal that while
sleeping (actually dreaming) new study material is assimilated.
One must not forget that only very recently in the history of humans the brain has to cope with such
large amounts of pure theoretical and abstract matter (education). Before that, only two things were
important : surviving and reproduction. Our brain does absolutely make no difference between
theoretical matter or standard daily experiences, as long as it can compare, link and decide, it just does
do !
Never had a dream or nightmare that felt pretty real when waking up ? This brings us to sleepwalkers or
people with sleeping disorders. Perhaps the best proof that consciousness and subconsciousness
actually are the same (but on a different level) and use the same resources to operate. Although there
are many reasons why people sleepwalk, from malfunctions in the brain to extensive use of
amphetamines or other drugs shortly before sleeping, there is one common thing. The consciousness is
not active and the person is actually sleeping. Although most 'sleepwalkers' make spastic and
incoherent movements while dreaming, more severe cases are known where it would be incorrect to
state that all things done are essentially 'automated tasks'. For example, in the U.K. a man was
acquitted of the charge of murder on his mother-in-law. In this specific case precise proof was provided
that this person was, medically seen, a sleepwalker. To commit the murder, this person had to drive
over 20 kilometers by car to arrive at his mother-in-law’s house and to carry out his brutal action, all
while sleeping !
Fortunately, such severe cases of sleepwalking are rather rare because in normal conditions a switch in
the brain prevents physical actions (like walking or car driving) from happening. This is without doubt
the reason why someone can have a dream of only a few seconds while if in real life it would have
taken hours of action. If you dream you are going to a place, you do not waste time in actually doing so
but nevertheless it will feel like real. This particular switch immediately returns the signal one has
arrived. It looks pretty much like the well known 127 IP loop back address in computer networking.
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As mentioned before, this shows the correctness of the statement that the conscious and subconscious
actually do the same and use the same resources. All required actions to murder a mother-in-law,
conscious or subconscious, are exactly the same ! Driving the car is, as seen before, in most cases
routine (subconscious) but the processing of the visual information of the road (turn left, right, ...) in
order to stay on the road uses the complete visual cortex ! One would not expect this on the
subconscious level, unless the consciousness and subconscious operate in exactly the same way !
Most of the time we tend to forget what we dreamt, but if we wake up during the dream, in most cases,
we are well aware what the dream was. The same applies to a flash, idea or solution popping up in the
middle of the night. If we don't write it down immediately it's gone ! Why ? The answer is the short term
memory ! Both states of consciousness use the same brain functions, as described earlier, and the
short term memory is one of the only ways both 'meet' each other directly. In some cases the solution to
a problem will still be available (long term memory) but only if it concerns a 'problem' you're struggling
with for a 'long time' and you can make a direct link to it (for example by directly thinking on a particular
matter). Sleeping a night over it is in this latter case a wise decision ...
This is actually also the reason why students who love to party (a little too much) during the year and
need to absorb gigantic amounts of study material the day before the exam, tend to wake up and
confuse all 'new knowledge'. The subconscious struggles with the same restricted capacity as the
consciousness and although the subconscious did a fantastic job in linking and comparing this
information (during sleep), the amount was simply too much and only partial or restricted links are
stored. One confuses one thing with another, the link is simply not stable enough. Don't confuse this
with a blackout where fear is in most cases the main cause.
Creativity and thinking as such are the same (for the brain) and both work via simulation processes.
They are the result of successive abstract processes (via trial and error) and the outcome is
'something'. This outcome can be a theorem, vision or image, but it might as well be new input for
further 'thinking'. An artist who throws some paint on a canvas to get rid of it is not creative. His
colleague who “figured out this concept” first is creative ...
Even lies fall under the category of the simulation process. A lie is per definition not reality and most of
the time contains truth for more than ninety percent. The liar usually picks an existing experience
(linking) and only makes small changes to it. To accomplish this, a fast internal simulation of the lie is
made to check the credibility of the lie (compare). If found acceptable, the lie will be told (decision).
Every child goes through a phase of lying and it is remarkable how transparent and absurd these lies
are in the beginning. After a while, the lie becomes a little more subtle and less 'outer space' and is in
fact largely based on 'reality'. This is the reason why in most lies there is a reflection of about ninety
percent of reality. The links for the pattern, foundation or algorithm for lying are created in this typical
lying phase of the child and the results are satisfying, so why changing ...
All the above indicates that simulation processes can be done in a conscious (creativity, imagination,
lies) or a subconscious (dreams, nightmares, a flash) level and in exactly the same way !
Impact on the digital brain

What is the impact of all of this on our digital brain ? Well, a large cluster of neurons should be present
in the foundation of the blueprint allowing simulating processes. For us humans, this is situated in the
(pre)frontal lobe.
Secondly, two layers should be present : one for the conscious and one for the subconscious
processes. Both layers identical and capable of handling all brain functions even utilities like attention.
Try to wake up someone in the middle of a dream (REM) and it will take severe shaking to achieve this.
This demonstrates that the full attention of the brain during this phase is on the subconscious level !
Keep in mind that not all will be equal for both levels, but the differences are minor. As we will see later
on, it could be wise to integrate the storage and retrieval of data exclusively for the subconscious level.

A possible exception might be real ‘threatening’ information, which needs to be stored immediately. In
the chapter ‘Memory’ I discuss the storage topic and other relevant information like ‘the play-zone’ in
detail.
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Unexpected processes of the subconscious
Intuition or following the own instincts

Everyone has had this experience, at home or at work. You just feel something is not right but you fail
to point the exact reason. You are nevertheless pretty sure, but what ? This can be a certain feeling or
a new design (technical) or the expression on the face of a potential customer.
Actually, the answer is quite simple. Automated processes reside via the subconscious and such a
feeling of “intuition” will only occur in areas in which there is not enough experience in ! In that case the
subconscious is processing a simulation process and concludes something is missing (comparison).
There is no simple way for the subconscious to communicate directly with the consciousness (only vice-
versa), the subconscious is trying to make its point and this manifests itself through the feeling we call
“intuition” or “following the own instinct”.
Earlier in this document we have seen that, as a result of historical and sociological reasons, women
know better how to cope with emotions (experience) than men. Hence the statement that women are
more intuitive than men. In most cases this is true IF the input concerns emotions or feelings. Now that
we know that intuition is not exclusively meant for emotions, but can be triggered as the result of any
simulation process (every possible form of processable input the brain can handle), the only conclusion
can be that neither women nor men are more or less intuitive than the other gender, but in most cases
the nature of the intuition will reside in other areas. Once again, the basic need for intuition is to enough
experience in the specific field. Indeed a good cop (with lots of experience) just feels when something is
not right !
Thousands of years ago this 'warning signal' offered more chances in surviving and avoiding danger.
These days, it is more complicated due to the more complex nature of our way of living. If you feel your
new design is missing something or is not entirely correct, the answer usually won't pop up just like that.
No matter how hard you try. The result frequently doesn't show up until nighttime, while sleeping. This
is not coincidental of course, but one of the few moments the subconscious can directly communicate
with the consciousness (in this order) as seen before (shared use of short term memory during sleep).
Although I will not cover this subject in-depth in this document (not really necessary for an artificial
brain), the only way the subconscious can communicate directly with the consciousness is in a state of
relaxation (sleeping, meditation, hypnosis, ...). Originally, the subconscious main function was to burden
the consciousness and perform tasks delegated by the consciousness. Secondly, the short-term
memory is used up fast, so in fully awake, agitated or excited state the consciousness demands all
focus (interprets this as surviving) and pays no attention at subconscious data in the short-term
memory.
Imitation and insight

In most cases we learn new stuff by imitation. Every child imitates the behavior of the parents, every
math exercise is an imitation and a tennis tutor showing a pupil how to do a backhand will result in an
imitation of that backhand.
The main reason why imitation is so powerful, is because a reference (link) can be made where one
can compare to. And, as discussed earlier, linking and comparing are the two main features of a
thinking process.
To illustrate the fact that this behavior is not only preserved for children, it is advisable to have a look at
some research results done in that field. The imitation behavior in a meeting room : A junior
spontaneously adapts the behavior of a senior (if respected). If mister senior crosses his legs,
ambitious junior will follow within seconds ... Why ? Because he really would like to be the other person
and by copying this behavior he moves into that direction !

It often happens that, after a while and thanks to the experience, an insight in this field is obtained. Not
always, remember those courses in school where a reproduction of the result was possible, but
because of the lack of knowledge this wasn’t the case. In gaining insight, the basic principles
(algorithm) of the specific matter become clear and make it so much easier to progress in this material
or even to discover new areas.
It is often assumed that the mirror neurons are heavily involved in this. A special chapter is dedicated to
“mirror neurons” in this document.
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What about hormones ?
Introduction
A crucial function of diverse parts of the brain is to steer hormone-balances like testosterone, estrogen
and adrenaline. How important is this for the digital brain and how to implement this (if necessary) ?
Hormones
A number of our hormones are purely there for regenerative and practical (e.g. ghrelin and leptin for
hungry and saturated feeling) reasons and can be left out of the A.B.-equation.
The importance of hormones in the thinking process is imperative. Just look at the impact of falling in
love, both for male and female. Another example is the impact of menstruation on a woman. Women on
the other hand know that the more horny men are the less they can think clearly thanks to hormones.
Pick almost any other mood swing, from stress to depression and you will see that hormone changes
are the cause or at least present. But, unless a genetic failure or malfunction is present, it always is the
thinking process that both steers and receives input from these hormone changes.
When looking closer, one notices that hormones actually almost function as global variables and/or
global events and therefore are able to influence all parts of the body (not only the brain as such).
These diverse parts react or interact on these changes in other ways or don’t react at all, depending on
their specific function.
An odd question : is puberty required ?

For a long time I wondered why it takes 25 years before the human brain is fully developed. Of course
there is the factor of brain-growth as for all organic creatures but 25 years is an awful long time !
Especially if one takes into account that the average lifespan of humans 5.000 years ago must have
been something between 25 and 30 years old ! No, there must be an evolutionary reason behind this.
Somehow humans with a faster developing brain-cycle did not gain from it. But why ? The more logical
outcome would be that the sooner the brain is fully developed, the better …
To be honest, I still don’t know the answer ! Partially it must have something to do with the slow pace
we physically grow but at the age of 18 grow-pains are over and nevertheless it takes another 7 years
before the brain reaches its ‘maturity’. Personally I think this issue will remain unsolved …
This brings up another surprising question, this time hormone related : is puberty (or similar) required
for the thinking process, and for an A.B. ? To answer that question, assume for a moment we place an
artificial brain with all capacities of a mature person but without any data (experience) into a robot. Why
and what would be the first thing this A.B. needs to learn ? Getting used to all sensory input, that’s for
sure, but how would it handle this emotionally ? What about the fact that it is fully capable of having a
complete personality, but no data is present to support this ? What would be the motive to learn a
certain specific item ? Because we say so !?! I could go on popping up similar questions for a long time,
but the main conclusion is that it will not work well if it works at all !
Something else fascinated me for a long time and I believe the answer to this question is also the
answer to this topic. Pre-juvenile children (till the age of approximately 8-10 years old) absorb new
matter like they are in a hypnotic state. If those kids have a little confidence in the (mature) person in
front of them, they take every answer or piece of information as correct, even if it conflicts with other
information ! This is absolutely necessary because the amount of information to be processed in those
years is not only enormous, but on what basis would this kid be able to decide what is important and
what not ! Today a lot of this stuff is theoretical but only a few hundred years ago it was mainly basic
information on how to survive and interact with others in the group. Without this capacity, it would just

take an awful long time to obtain all crucial information upon which all later decisions will be based. As
a result of this intense learning period, the almost complete base for the future personality will be
formed in that timeframe !
Ask any parent, once the juvenile phase pops up, every answer will be questioned ! At that time the
individual will, bit by bit, create an own personality based on the earlier stages. Only at the final stage
(approximately 25 years old) the concept of cause and consequences is fully mature as well. This last
point explains why even 20 year old people sometimes still act so stupid !
This whole issue is one of the main reasons I have my doubts with copying and digitizing the human
brain just like this. What about hormones and how would the system start its learning phase !?!
The impact on the digital brain
The hormone part

As discussed previously, hormone changes operate like global vars or global events. It would be good
practice to foresee a central space in our A.B. where these ‘hormones’ reside both as variables and
events (to notify changes).
Which digital hormones must be present in order to achieve real intelligence ? This needs some further
investigation. It is for sure that some like adrenaline are imperative to even have a fully functional digital
brain ! In the future, when I refer to (digital) hormones, just look at them as global variables or events
and it will make things less complex, without being less adequate ! All organic based creators suffer
from the fact that if global vars would be present as such, the number of internal connections would end
up so high that there wouldn’t be room left for ‘normal’ neurons … … so, hormones are the ideal
solution to overcome this problem for us, organic creatures !
The pre-juvenile phase

Two important factors need to be considered :
• How to create this required ‘hypnotic’ state ?
Different approaches are possible, but my favorite is a combination of hard coding a phase
where the motivation of what to learn is fully dependant on the primal tutor(s). Whatever these
guys instruct or teach at that moment is considered as holy, as it should be for most parents.
The approval or disapproval will function as correction. In idle moments (no tutor teaching), the
priority should be to get used to and optimize all sensory input and motor output. It would be
good practice as well to foresee a period of ‘sleep’ to help assimilate all conscious information
via the subconscious (a digi-dream phase ;-)). The second important factor in this combination
is that the attention of the ‘pupil’ must be focused on what the tutor is teaching, combined with a
temporary raise of priority of the subconscious level during that phase.
This latter combination deserves some extra explanation. If no focus of attention is present
towards the tutor(s), whatever input at that moment could be handled as important or even an
overflow of information could be the result. The temporary rising of the subconscious level is a
little harder to explain. People familiar with hypnosis know that it is nothing more or less than
creating a higher state of suggestibility (exactly what we need !), no special or mysterious tricks.
Unless otherwise instructed at the end of the session, one is and stays fully aware of what
happened during the session. This implies that the conscious level remains active but on a
lower pace. The subconscious level on the other hand gains priority and stores the information
__________________________________________________

more efficient than otherwise, if not conflicting with other ‘rules’ (again the conscious level). In
the case of hypnosis no extreme emotions are usually present and the information is stored
better and faster. This indicates that somehow the amygdala is surpassed in storing this data.
We also know that it can take weeks before certain ‘neutral’ data gets actually stored in the
long-term memory and this points out that it is the task of the subconscious to actually store the
data and not the conscious level. But more on this topic in the chapter about memory.
• Who will the system accept as primal tutor(s) ?
All animals, humans included, have the reflex of being cautious for new things (more chances in
surviving). Curiosity on the other hand is the force that allows us to make small steps towards
these new things. Once a non-threatening situation (pattern) is being recognized, one (animal
or person) is trustier and accepts it better.
Although several possibilities exist to make the system pick someone as the primal tutor(s)
without having the normal time consuming drawbacks of lifting cautiousness, I personally have
three favorites :
• The system can be programmed to see the first moving or speaking “person” after primary
activation as the main tutor. This is the way it works for ducks and gooses. It is simple to
implement and works perfect. The drawback of this approach is that only one person will be
accepted as tutor at first and it will take a while before the system will accept another as
equal tutor (cautiousness of the system). Another disadvantage of this approach is that
whatever first thing (human or not human) drawing the attention from the system, will be
considered as the primal tutor. This means that the environmental conditions must be
optimal to avoid distraction from the tutor. Otherwise a bypassing fly or a screensaver in
action could be considered as primal tutors by the system and I assume that is not the
objective …
• The fear-slider (as explained later) can be placed at no-fear (absolute trust) for a small
period of time (a couple of days) at first activation of the system. This approach looks a little
like the system the gnu uses, a two-day “isolation” period to allow the calf to become
familiar with the mother. The system will then, temporarily, consider all input as friendly and
accept these tutors as equal. The immense disadvantage of this approach is that during that
period all sensory input will be considered friendly, even destructive behavior. The problem
here is that the system must have time enough to establish a recognition pattern towards
the tutors and at the same time will start learning all sensory input and motor output. The
remark on the strict environmental conditions from the above paragraph is also applicable to
this case.
• The third one is my absolute favorite one ! The advantage of a digital brain is that we are
not restricted by capacity or available predefined space like is the case with an organic
brain. So why not creating an extra space where the voice pattern of the primal tutors can
be stored before first activation. Once the system gets activated, the system can be
programmed to compare speech with the existing patterns and if one fits, the fear-slider at
that moment (and for that process only) should be near to no-fear and full attention should
be provided to this tutor. Depending on the application of the A.B. it could be wise not to
end this or even restrict it and as such not allow others to be of influence (no voice pattern
recognition, no teaching possible). The latter would probably be the rule in military
concepts. In most cases there should be a time limitation for this since the system otherwise
doesn’t has the capacity to learn from others than the initial tutors. This approach of
accepting primal tutors is not only relatively simple to implement, but in my humble opinion,
the best and most complete method !
• How to move the fear-slider towards trust in the pre-juvenal phase ?

If the default state of belief for new information is ‘belief, the trust-level at that moment will be
maximal. The same applies to tutors : if the object referring to this tutor is flagged as
“trustworthy” (belief) there will be 100% trust and all new information will be considered as
correct. This allows the system to learn without questioning at all.
Is ‘belief’ and ‘fear’ both necessary ? Is it not easier to implement only one ? I will answer this in
the chapter “Memory”.
The juvenile phase

Unlike the pre-juvenile phase, a ‘digital puberty’ phase is not mandatory to obtain a working A.B. But
personally I would seriously consider adding it anyway ! Why ? It is rather simple to implement and the
outcome is far better predictable. Somehow the A.B. will need some simulation of certain hormones like
testosterone and adrenaline (as explained earlier) to work. If we give the final default values as from the
first activation, the risk is present that the system could be too aggressive ! Since no data is available
for a newborn baby of twenty years old, the same is valid for a fully functional A.B. with no data present
at first activation. It is too complex to imagine what unexpected things (in the negative sense) might
result out of that method.
An A.B. is a serious matter that needs to be approached with wisdom and caution ! Control is
everything ! Therefore I strongly advise everyone who attempts to create an A.B., to give this
serious thought ! The main rule is simple : if you don’t know the outcome of something for sure,
try to find a way around of something you can predict the effect of for sure !
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Deeper thoughts
'I think, therefore I am ...'

Who doesn't know this statement of Descartes ! But it reaches much further than the traditional
conclusion of the self-awareness. Someone thinking he or she is a bungler, will reflect this in every
possible way and act as such.
Experience is the key feature in how we think in the long term about ourselves. Both environmental and
genetic factors (the character) are important in what kind of experiences we will have, but they are not
the determinant factor. Only experience is !
A good example to illustrate this is someone who is born with a severely misshaped face who is
constantly stared after by others (that's experience). Already in an early stage in his life this person will
diagnose his 'being different' and being treated differently (by others) via the mirror and the being
staring after (comparison). After a while, this person will feel more and more (psychological) pain
because of being stared after constantly (linking) and will decide (the decision) that having contact with
others is not a very pleasant experience and is to be avoided ! A lonely person is born ...
Let’s now assume humans are evolved enough to understand that this person is also a person like any
other, except for the misshaped face. In this, unfortunately purely hypothetic case, there will be no
staring after and as a result no solitary existence would have existed (no such experiences). Although,
at the age of puberty this person would probably find it more difficult than others to get in touch with the
opposite sex. This will undoubtedly result in a number of negative links towards the opposite sex. The
chances this will lead to a total solitary existence are much smaller since the experiences with the own
gender were namely positive.
The buzzword 'perception'

The above example clearly shows the main impact of experiences in our personal growth. But the
primary factor in this 'experiences experience' is ‘perception’. How do we interpret something ?
As tackled in the beginning of this article, the brain does not care what sort of input it has to process, as
long as linking and comparison is possible. The traditional five senses are human’s direct allies but I
would like to add one to that list, feelings or emotions. Although it is tempting to categorize this under
feeling, one must first dig into the purpose of the senses. The mutual thing they all have in common is
that they provide input to the brain, most of the time this will be external data like images, noise or a
certain smell. In case of feeling, the data can come from both external or internal information. You can
feel the table via the nerve ends in the hand (external), or you can feel pain in the stomach or knee
(internal).
Feelings or emotions are always internal and an exception because they are variable. A situation can
make us angry one day, where another day we actually don't care at all about this. The other senses
are more regular in the way they operate. You won’t suddenly see, smell, hear or taste better tomorrow
and if you bump into a wall it will hurt as much as today. Emotions are a major input source for the brain
(both cause and result) and therefore deserve the term 'sense'.
The following example is probably one of the best ways to demonstrate how perception influences our
thinking process. Two boys and a girl are having a nice time in a club. At a certain moment during the
conversation, one of the boys says 'Yesterday I sat on the bed with my brother'. That is a fact !
Yesterday this one guy was indeed sitting on his brother’s bed. The second boy spontaneously starts to
smile because, as child, sitting on the bed with his brother always ended in a hilarious pillow-fight. The
girl on the other hand gets tears in her eyes thanks to a sexual abuse for many years on her brother’s
bed. Tree persons, one sentence, tree different interpretations and reactions : one neutral, one positive

and one negative. The probability that the second boy (good experience) will be more and more active
involved in this conversation is great, because of the 'positive feeling'. With the girl, most likely the
opposite will happen ...
This also shows that both consciousness and subconscious actually are only capable of processing
simulation processes (what else would perception be ?) ! We do not live with facts, but with
interpretations of facts ! Someone with a little imagination could very well, and correctly, state that we
do not really live our life, but (at brain level) rather experience an interpretation of 'life' ... … which is
accurate since everything is belief as seen before !
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Values and ego
Introduction
Who hasn’t heard of these words, but what do they stand for and how do they influence the thinking-
process ?
In psychology ego is often divided in four or even more parts, but personally I do not agree with this for
the reasons explained beneath.
Relativity
Nothing we interpret is absolute, this would be in contradiction with the linking and comparison
principles our thinking process is based upon. So, it is relative. Earlier in this document, I discussed the
need of the (variable) calibration system to accomplish this. Some will find thousand dollars a lot of
money where others see one million dollars as pocket money. A poor guy winning the lottery will
probably recalibrate his view on money. So it is variable.
Another typical example is the relativity of 'good' and 'bad', the moral question. The definition not only
depends on the time spirit and education, but also on how we tend to define it for ourselves. If everyone
would define all terms the same way, a legal system would even be obsolete ! If one would find a drug
that cures all diseases, most people would consider this as 'good' but those working for the
pharmaceutical industry (directly or indirectly), would loose their job, profit or investment and most likely
define this as 'bad' (at least in short terms).
Sometimes we all are a little selfish (as discussed in detail later) and the way we fine-tune our
calibration system is based on this. Remember the example at the start of this document when learning
to ride the bike. It is in our own best interest to keep balanced during biking ! Falling hurts and is
considered as not pleasant. As also seen before, the brain does not care where the input comes from
as long as it can link and compare. This results in an explanation why physical pain (not pleasant) and
psychical pain (also not pleasant) are treated the same way by the human brain.
This flexible calibration system makes people unique ! Thanks to so many individual experiences,
spread over time, it is very unlikely to find two people with exactly the same calibration settings ! Every
experience (link) will play its role in future comparison for 'similar' information. Often it is extremely hard
to see what cause and consequence are !
This way of relative interpretation is also the main reason why we have such a high adaptability.
Someone moving from the Arctic to the Sahara will adapt remarkably fast !
Standard of values
Does one choose ‘friendship’ over ‘money’ or vice versa ? It is one of these typical examples that
suggest there must be a standard of values present somewhere in the brain. But the reality is different !
There is no standard at all ! To better understand this, it is imperative to dig deeper in how linking is
being performed in the thinking process.
As mentioned earlier, if I let you hear the sound of a cow or I show the picture of a cow, the brain will
refer to the same thing : a cow (whatever this might be in your brain). If I ask you to make the noise of a
cow, you will first refer to the cow and thereafter pick the wanted specification (in this case the sound of
a cow). Somehow it is quite obvious, since the brain always tries to compare and link and once the
object 'cow' is present, the simplest way to add new information in the case of our cow is to link the new
information to the object cow. In most cases links between 'different objects' will be there as well. In our
example, you will most likely also think of 'the object cow' if you step into a cow cake, although a cake

as such has nothing to do with the object cow !
The above principle is widely accepted by many people dealing with the way memory is stored into our
brain. It is often presented as a treeview where the parent is the main object and the linked objects are
ancestors. But if we look a bit closer we will notice something special. If someone working on a farm
frequently has to deal with cow cakes (not stepping into them, cleaning them up, …), it becomes more
important to have a direct link towards cow cakes, separated from the ‘old parent’. And that is exactly
what will occur ! After a while the cow cake will be associated with a cow cake and will be directly
accessible without deviations. This illustrates that the memory storage is pointer-based and is pretty
well comparable with placing a shortcut on the computer’s desktop to directly go to a certain document.
Always the same : linking and comparison. Time after time ! The more links (also indirect) refer to a
certain object or subject, the higher this value will be in our fictive list. The more links, the more
important it will be (both positive and negative) simply because one will be confronted (at brain level)
more with this object or subject. The more important something is, the more we are willing to 'defend' it
and that's why it sometimes really appears as if there actually is a list. This would indeed be correct if it
was not for the weight of the items. As seen before, we tend to give labels as 'good' or 'bad' to certain
'objects' and this will have its reflection on the output ! That explains why someone having a 'bad'
experience with friends at this moment might change the standard (temporarily or permanently,
depending on future experiences) from 'friends above all' to 'money above all'. Last experiences (once
again, links to certain subjects or objects) have a huge weight in this algorithm (comparisons) !
The world turns around you !

The brain is only capable of processing the own signals (and not those of others) via simulation
processes, causing everyone to be little islands near each other. You are unable to actually feel the
exact pain somebody else is going through. In best case, via emphatic ways (again simulation process),
you can feel something similar, but it never will be the pain the other is going through ! That is also the
reason the own pains are heavier and worse than the pains of somebody else. Some even love pain
(SM).
During lots of years, you will make much links to other individuals in the direct surrounding like parents,
brothers/sisters, children and friends. These links cause a certain relationship. If one of these links is
dropped (for instance the passing-away of somebody), it is mostly very hard to accept. Because in
these cases lots of links (direct and indirect) (memories) are present of the living related or acquainted.
Remember the brain is unable to handle facts (everything is interpretation) and the brain has several
vivid links to that person living. The interpretation (via linking and comparison) is that this is impossible
(disbelieve) since the brain only has links to this person alive ! The brain actually doesn't know how to
deal with this, it is confused. It simply is so in contradiction with all other brain information available.
Notice that in case of a long term chronic illness, during which it is possible to see death arriving, the
brain is able to start making links towards the 'not being there anymore' of this individual and it will be
less hard (the factor disbelieve is minor). The more memories (especially positive ones) the harder it
will be to get over it. In some cases certain people refuse to accept the death and continue to make
new links (although this person is no longer alive) (often the case with the loss of children) and this will
cause a lifetime of emotional pain.
Emotional pain (remember : emotions or feelings are derivatives of fear) ? Is fear then behind all of
this? Yes and no. Fear and believe is more correct and as we saw before, believe is the most important
property in how we define and interpret fear. As also seen before, changes (or situations we are not
familiar with) cause fear because no linking is possible. In the above-mentioned example, we can link,
but this would be incorrect (since this person no longer is) and this causes the fear. Notice that this
often happens in these moments that someone has serious doubts about his religion ! It was faith that
provided at the same time that safe feeling and comfort but also the explanation (linking). The new
__________________________________________________

'facts' are in conflict with this and make people doubt …
If the deceased is someone totally unknown, you’ll probably say 'Oh, that is sad !', but ten minutes later
you will have forgotten about it. Except if there are some mutual interests involved which will induce
linking like : age or place of the accident (I passed there ten minutes before the accident, it could have
been me !)). At that moment You are confronted with the possibility that it could have been you or that it
can happen to you which allows you to line and compare. Note that someone suicidal will not think of
this deceased as 'Oh, that's too bad', but more likely 'You lucky bastard !'. Your world turns around you
and depending on diverse factors the facts will be interpreted differently ...
Self-interest, always !
This is without any doubt a daring statement, but let’s look a bit closer at next examples before shooting
the pianist !
If you look at a group photo and you know you are on it, who do you look first for ? Indeed, yourself. I've
been asking this question at hundreds of people over the last ten years and never had a different
answer !
Why do you vote for a specific political group ? The 'values' they stand for will be the ones you deem
important. Not the values of your neighbor, boss or mother-in-law (unless you benefit from this) ! If in
your opinion (and yours only) your vote won’t make any difference, you won’t vote at all or blanc (if
voting is obligated) or you will simply issue a protest vote.
Why are you member of a union or employers’ organization ? To protect your own interests or to gain
(personally) from it.
Why are religious people willing to obey to certain 'rules' which others (even from different religious
groups) find odd ? Indeed, to personally get into 'heaven' (the ultimate goal in most religions).
What happens in disastrous fires on ships or overcrowded places with few exits ? The individual will do
anything to survive. Only few people will say under such circumstances to a complete stranger : 'No, no
! I insist you go first'. The hotter it gets or the more falling, burning pieces, the more elementary
courtesy will fade away !
It is not by coincidence that in countries where few people are religious that selfishness prevails to that
extent ! Each religion helps in defining a number of standard values. To reach the 'higher purpose', one
must walk between the borderlines of these values. Disbelievers are not obliged to follow these 'rules'
and automatically fall back on the 'own' values.
Even they way we act towards our children is more often driven by selfishness than one would expect !
Look a bit closer at why you behave the way you do towards your children and try to find the links with
your own childhood. Did you have few toys and do you want to overcompensate your child ? Couldn't
you or was it not allowed (by the parents) to become a football player, actor or musician, ... and are you
pushing this dream (of yours) to become reality through your child (against its will) ?
Also some of the noble feelings we have, are less dignifying than appear at sight ! A typical example is
compassion. Compassion namely implies a certain superiority, strange but true ! You can only feel
compassion if your situation is better in that particular field. So you are actually slapping yourself on the
back and are probably insulting someone ! Sympathizing on the other hand is different from
compassion. You can only sympathize in these fields you are familiar with and have similar experience.
Empathic simulation processes are possible through linking and comparison. Semantics are more
important than one would expect.
As a matter of fact, if the brain is only capable of handling the own processes, as seen before, how on
earth would it ever be able not to be selfish (since it must somehow all be related to 'the self') !?!

Alll information is somehow related to one-self, this could explain why “guilt” is one of the most frequent
emotions. If something happens and all is related to oneself, it is likely that ‘oneself’ could have done
something to avoid this (that is the thought in the background) and that causes this guilt feeling … … it
is hard to view other perspectives if one is only capable of handling the own information originating from
the own perspective ! Merge this with the linking and comparison principles the brain is based upon and
you understand the typical “if I had done this or that, I could have avoided it” !
Altruism …
For a long time the assumption was made that altruism was one of the main differences that
distinguished humans from other primates (originating 6 million years ago when a sub branch of the
chimps was born (our pre-ancestors)). Recent research demonstrated that chimpanzees also have the
altruism ability and therefore it can no longer be considered as exclusive for humans !
How is altruism possible if, as explained earlier, everything is self related (selfish) ?!? One could state
that education and religion play an important role in this, and they do, but I have not seen a deep
religious and well-educated chimp lately.
At a certain point, on conscious or subconscious level, a link can and will be made that one can benefit
from ‘helping’ someone else. This can be in the form of appreciation, a good feeling (even compassion)
or by having had a similar experience and knowing that it is hard to handle single. But one of the main
reasons one creature helps another ‘without rewarding’ is that at a later point the inverse might be
necessary. This is especially important in socializing ! Just look at how people react to someone never
being polite (or even being rude) when something is given or offered. Most common reflection will be
“next time you are on your own” ! Isn’t that in conflict with the definition of altruism …
It is possible that mirror neurons have an important role in this. The empathic information can lead to
offering help. However, sadistic people will have a good feeling when not helping … … same input,
other motives, other outcome !
On the other hand, it is also likely that mirror neurons could be the cause of narcissism as well. A small
experiment I did with some adolescents displaying narcissistic behavior (thanks to over-rewarding
(extreme ego) and no sort of punishment in case of ‘bad manners’), it is my opinion that experience
(and rewarding) is the base for narcissism. I touch this subject of narcissism here because it is so in
conflict with altruism that at least it should be reviewed thoroughly !
Some experiments demonstrated that good-looking people (both men and women) get easier help than
others (e.g. when asking for directions). This shows that there must always be a motivator in order to
initiate action and that motivation always comes from within our thinking process. In that way it could be
that altruism is actually a myth …
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A number of important actors
Motivation
The brain takes decisions that are, directly or indirectly, in one’s self-interest. This self-interest must be
interpreted in a very open way and appreciation, punishment and values on the one hand and emotions
on the other hand are the main driving causes. The total of these factors is what we describe as
'motivation'. What drives us to take a certain decision or not ?
Everything you will do, will always be for a conscious or subconscious reason. Why would you get out
of your chair to get something to drink if you had no sense of thirst ? Why would you study day after day
on study material you are absolutely not interested in (fear of not getting your degree) ? Why do you
prefer mathematics over English or vice versa (appreciation via good results and the confidence (not-
fear) you can handle it, usually through positive experiences) ? ...
In the sixties a lot of research was done in creating the 'Über-soldier' and one of the main researches
concerned people with a disconnected amygdala (the center of fear). At first sight, this should result in a
fearless soldier, but reality showed a different outcome ! Someone (soldier or not) with a disconnected
amygdala turned into a vegetable ! Why ? Since motivation is mainly based on fear (via values,
emotions, appreciation and punishment), the disconnected amygdala only results in someone with no
motivation at all !
Each intelligent system, humans included, needs some sort of motivation to (be able to) perform new
tasks. Otherwise after one action or one series of actions the system would end-up in a passive state !
Why in heaven’s name would the system take new actions and even more important based upon
what ?!? Humans’ main enemy, nl. “fear”, is actually its primary ally and it is the absolute fundament for
its intelligence ! On the other hand, if the intelligent system would not be able to set priorities or
preferences and absorb all information as such, there would be a total overflow of the complete
system !
The three main motivators for human beings are : surviving, reproduction and acceptance (people
would do literally everything to be part of the group).
Appreciation versus punishment

'Well done !' or 'I couldn't have done it without your help !'. Who doesn't like to get these compliments !
Why is appreciation so important for our way of thinking ? As mentioned above, motivation is necessary
to start new 'actions'. Appreciation not only helps us in lifting the priority in our list of values, but it also
helps in bending certain fears (emotions or feeling) into trust and thereby facilitating the 'action-
process'. As seen before, the fear-slider can only be moved via ‘belief’, this indicates that appreciation
(or rewarding) and punishment are ‘belief’-related and both pillars are the driving forces behind the
complete ‘belief’-mechanism !
Appreciation (the strongest possible way of rewarding) determines how the remuneration system of the
brain works ! Appreciation indirectly expresses that your life is not worthless !
Attention is a form of appreciation since it shows indirectly that someone is important (otherwise you
wouldn't pay attention to that person).
It would be incorrect to look at appreciation without talking about rewarding and punishment. In the
human brain, both have a specific area. It is not surprising that the punishment area is intensively
interacting with the amygdala. People having problems with the amygdala functioning (like diverse
forms of autism) need continues confirmation and appreciation. Remember also that one of the
functions of the amygdala is to help storing the information in the long term memory. With autistic

people, the ‘negative’ is better and faster stored than the ‘positive’. They tend to be rather pessimistic
and have a low self-image, often resulting in under-performing.
Notice too that children having had an optimal balance between approval and disproval are the ones
when growing adults who will have the least problems in socializing. Children for whom only
encouragement and approval and no punishment was used, are conditioned in that way that whatever
they do, no punishment will ever follow. Children who had to undergo continuous punishment and who
were rarely encouraged and appreciated will suffer from a very low self-image and will often under-
perform (why bother, it is never good enough). In some cases they will grow into perfectionists,
continuously searching for approval and appreciation … … something to keep in mind when raising an
intelligent system.
Since both rewarding and punishment are mandatory for a brain a low level implementation in the A.B.
will be required ! How ? By hard-coding that all the ‘negative’ (physical or emotional punishment) must
be avoided and all the ‘positive’ (rewarding) must be embraced ! This is best done by implementing a
pain and pleasure variable and the one with the highest value at that moment will determine if future
similar experiences will be deliberately re-experienced. Since this is very similar with the way the
human brain works, it is theoretically possible to obtain an A.B. loving Sado Masochism (pleasure value
higher than pain value) …
Instincts
The number of instincts the A.B. needs to have is actually very limited. Some of the elements like
surprise and curiosity could be considered as instincts and are mandatory. A “regeneration instinct” is
best implemented as well. If the system is low on energy, the attention must be drawn to this (works
best if this is accompanied with some sort of pain) until it is solved ! What about the surviving instinct ?
Well, we do not have such a thing and it is not required for the A.B. either ! This ‘surviving instinct’ is
rather a group of individual mechanisms (like the above-mentioned instincts) mostly fear-based
combined with the earlier declared ‘pain and pleasure’-system directly related to the amygdala or
digidala !
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Memory
Introduction
More memory space for humans
Although we know a lot of the human brain, we know very little on how than first thought ?
everything is stored in the brain. Oh yes, we discovered a number of
areas involved like the amygdala and the hippocampus, but that is A bizarre phenomenon in the medical
pretty much it ! Thanks to some experiments and malfunctions we world is the one of changed
assume the existence of a sensory, short-term, long-term and working preferences after heart
memory and some models have been created according to this transplantations. These changes can
be in food, spare time or whatever. For
knowledge. instance one might not like sweet
pepper before the transplant and
The lack of understanding gives us the opportunity to redefine the way become a big fan afterwards or
things should be stored in an efficient and logical way for our A.B.. someone lazy becoming a disciplined
cyclist.
A major advantage the brain has is that it is never switched off until
While not all doctors do accept this,
death. Computer systems on the other hand need to store all on hard the ‘evidence’ indicates that the
disk to overcome power failures, critical problems with reboots as a neurons around the heart function as
result or fatal errors in the software. That definitely is something to keep memory as well and this could be the
into account in the design of a digital brain ! explanation why some preferences of
the (anonymous) donor are transferred
The typical definition of memory is : “The ability to store, retain and via the transplant to the acceptant. If
this would turn out to be correct and
(subsequently) recall information” and this is a good starting point. one is aware of the large number of
neurons near the intestines, the region
What about synapses ? of available memory could very well be
larger than originally thought …
In this complete document I touched the term ‘synapse’ only a couple of
times. How can I justify this if you know that synapses form the absolute fundament in data storage in
the human brain ? Well, in a digital brain the storage will obviously most likely be on hard disk. Years
ago when databases where less standardized everybody in informatics used an own data-format and
the better-written formats were binary and based on the principles of pointer-tables. Multiple tables
could exist to allow sorting the pointers in diverse ways. The principle behind pointer-tables is similar to
synapses. Both the pointer-table and the synapse can point to many other pointer-tables or synapses
and behind the reference they are pointing to, any form of data can be present. Both allow
fragmentation of data, as explained later in this chapter, a necessity.
Storing information
The first step in memory handling is how to store the data. Without, none of the others is possible !
Since, as mentioned in the introduction, the possibility exists that for some reason the program might
get terminated unexpectedly, it is wise to store all (even processes in progress) on hard disk. This is
best done in mirror (duplicate) to overcome file-errors caused by the interruption or hard disk failure.
While it will slow down the system a tiny, the benefits by far supersede this disadvantage.
The main challenge is how to store the impressions (what else is sensory input) in an ‘ordered’ way and
available for other sensory experiences. In other words how can I for instance make the link between
the visual information, sound and smell of a cow ? The answer is virtual objects. Virtual because the
information in the object can be anything ! If you hear the sound of a cow, this does not imply you will
ever see or smell a cow in your life. The information can also be non-sensory such as procedures,
scripts, feelings, etc. so the object must be universal in order to link everything to everything like we are
capable of and is required to achieve real intelligence.
A major key player in solving this is the need of a common factor. If there was not such an aspect, it

would be very well possible to have separate objects of the same without a link in between. A partial,
non-connected object for the visual, audio and aromatic information of a cow for instance. This
theoretically would work, but not only would it consume an awful lot more memory (diverse objects
containing similar information), it would also give trouble in internal communication.
So what should this common factor be ? Hypothetically it can be anything ! It can be a number or an
image, however, some implementation problems pop up then, not in the way to store but in the way to
retain or recall the information. If I need to think of the number 256,197,885,053 (the common factor) to
refer to the object ‘cow’, it will be hard ! The same applies to images. If I need to run over all available
images to detect if this one is of a cow before being able to ‘recall my cow’, I would remain busy for a
dreadful lot of time and the complete system would run extremely slow.
The inner voice

Before continuing, it is wise to have a closer look at something we call the inner voice. This will not only
reveal the solution for this topic but will also show the path to real intelligence !
Talking to yourself, most of the time without sound … … it is the best and most accurate description I
have for this phenomenon ! Everybody does it but not all are aware of doing so. In the Baddeley and
Hitch model of the working memory of the brain, the ‘phonological loop’ is actually fragments (words) of
this inner voice !
Question is how to create this inner voice when no data or lexicon is present ! Surprisingly, the solution
is rather easy. At start, random ‘labeling’ should be used and yes, multiple objects containing similar
info originating from different sensory input will be present. After a while the system will create sort of a
vocabulary (like babies do) and the phonetic meaning will become more and more similar to ours. Once
this vocabulary gets developed, the system will be able of referring much of this sensory input to this
label. Diverse input will point to the same object and the older meaningless labels will expire (number of
times recently used and last access date). The same applies to the human brain. So the inner voice will
build its vocabulary from meaningless to others towards a similar vocabulary most of us use.
The ‘phonetic labeling’ solves the problem in linking to the same object and recalling information
structured referring to the same but from multiple points of view and that was the target !
During this progression, the thinking process can begin and is basically creating combinations of
existing information (linking and comparison). It surprises me how often I say (internally) ‘what if I try it
this way’ in solving problems. So I need the ability to have access to information not directly related and
if you look closer at this, something strange appears ! No information is by itself connected to other
separate information unless insight or comprehension is present ! That is the reason why some people
have trouble solving mathematical expressions slightly modified ! As long as the basic pattern is there
no problems pop-up, but if the same exercise is shaken a little, confusion occurs !
In the topic on synapses I touch the subject of pointer-tables and although the above ‘labeling’ best
requires some way of indexing in order to sort the labels (for fast retrieval purposes), I would not advise
the use of traditional databases to achieve this. A couple of years ago I did some serious experimenting
on this topic and wrote a low level binary data-container based on the principles of optimized pointer-
tables. The outcome was an ultra-lightweight (both in memory use as overhead storage) and extreme
fast ‘database’, virtually unlimited in capacity and by nature allowing (any sort of) data to be fragmented
over diverse files on diverse (network) drives. It incorporated the possibility to vary the size and type
(numeric or alphanumeric) of the pointer-table and of course the option to sort (index) if required.
The results of this experiment can be considered as a good starting point on how to store data in the
digibrain ! As a matter of fact, a revised version will be the first code I will make available on the net.
After all, data storage is the base of every system …
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The principles behind belief and fear

Belief is the mysterious factor in the A.B.-riddle. It is everywhere but can be so hard to indicate ! How
does belief work ? That is the main question in solving the A.B.-puzzle ! If I point at a chair and ask you
if you believe that it is a chair, the answer will be most likely positive (and maybe you will be curious
that it might be something else because I ask this rather stupid question). The opposite would happen if
I point a finger at a table and ask if you believe it is a chair ! The concept of a chair is well defined in our
brain and during our lives we encounter lots of chairs. But if I show you something futuristic and very
abstract and ask the same question, the outcome will be less predictable ! You will try and find
similarities in the favor of the concept ‘chair’ and depending on the balance the outcome will be one of
the three states : belief, disbelief or no opinion.
This was already explained in the chapter on belief. But let’s go back to absolute basics to discover why
belief is involved in everything concerning the brain. The answer is neurons, it does not matter whether
these are organic or digital in nature ! On what base does a neuron (axon) fire ? Yes, dependent on the
input and how many errors away from a ‘known’ reference. It is a speculation, in other words a sort of
belief ! This is actually what thinking is about and why the play-zone (described later this chapter) is
required. This zone allows the system to place forms of belief above information (the thinking process)
and if the outcome is positive (belief it could be correct), that path will be continued !
Although the subject of belief is covered already in several parts throughout this document some
questions remained unanswered …
The first question is if it is really necessary to have both belief and fear stored since, as explained
earlier, it looks as both depend on each other. The right question to ask in solving this riddle is if fear
can steer belief ? The answer is no ! Although it sometimes looks that way, it is actually the belief
behind the fear that will steer the fear and this belief can steer the first mentioned belief. So belief can
have a direct impact on belief, fear not.
A good example to demonstrate this is the confrontation with a bear. Seeing a bear all the sudden right
in front of you will trigger the surprise mechanism (the belief something is dangerous) and this will
cause fear. If the bear just passes by without even looking at you, the fear will still be present, even
after the bear is back in the bushes and no input of his presence is longer available. Only when you
belief it is safe again (and this can be a while after the encounter) the fear will decrease.
The second question is how this method of moving-the-fear-slider works. We already saw some
mechanisms like acceptance and curiosity doing the job, but most of the time these are not the driving
force, experience is ! Experience is just another word for ‘content’ to be stored ! If a new ‘positive’
experience occurs, it will be stored and the properties present at that moment will influence the
complete bundle of information available at that moment. Never forget that a single thought exists out of
much different sorts of fragmented data. The scripting I mentioned before will therefore contain data
such as certain feelings (fears) and the status of belief for that specific object. Both the elements
against as in favor will have a reference as well. This last can best be explained by an example.
If someone is telling you that your partner is cheating on you, disbelief will probably be the result,
especially if no data is available indicating the opposite. Nevertheless this data will be stored and a
pointer towards this will also be saved in the object ‘partner’. If someone else tells you a month later the
same, chances are high a serious doubt will rise. This is because a second pointer with ‘negative’
information (the experience) will be stored, again with a pointer in the ‘partner’ object. It is well possible
that, after this second warning signal, you would do some research. Dependent on the outcome the
doubt will be :
• Confirmed. This will have serious impact since the belief in the partner will (at least temporarily)
switch to disbelief ! But even more dramatic is that all other types of ‘belief’ related to the object
partner would be questioned as well.
• Unconfirmed. The research did not clear anything and the question remains if the partner is

trustworthy. Ask people of a child missing for five years how devastating this state is !
• Enfeebled. It is a hoax and the so-called new playmate turns out to be for the opposite sex, so it
should be your partner worrying instead. Since this statement enfeebles all previous negative
statements, the belief that the partner is trustworthy is correct and ‘belief’ will be restored. A
side-effect of this will be that the belief in the messengers of ‘the bad news’ will in future
encounters be questioned more …
Doubt is actually always a form of belief on top of the current belief and will be the cause of fear (in this
case most likely jealousy and anger). The belief will be that maybe the belief that your partner is
exclusively for you is not (longer) correct.
The above example also demonstrates that it is likely to have a pointer in a centralized table in the digi-
brain with ‘important’ (unfinished) issues. This possible cheating will be something constantly playing in
the head and it will draw the attention to the internal thoughts the whole time. It will literally be hard to
focus on other things ! Notice as well that this will happen on both conscious as subconscious level.
During dreaming this will somehow be integrated in the dreams. It will even be hard to get some sleep
because the attention is always drawn towards this and as long as this happens on conscious level, it
will keep you awake !
A second question is how belief can influence the fear-slider ? Two parameters are important in this :
• The number of references (experiences) available for this specific topic. The more similar (in the
broadest sense of the word) links, the more the fear-slider will be moved in one or the other
direction.
• The reliability of the information. If you discover your partner in bed with a new playmate
yourself, this will be experienced as very reliable information and will cause the fear-slider to
move faster towards fear. If you have a best friend you consider (experience) as very reliable
and he or she is the messenger of the cheating message, although it might be a hoax, you will
probably believe this info and the fear slider will move quite fast towards fear. If the messenger
has a history of being unreliable, the fear slider will only move slightly at once.
The ‘play-zone’
If the target is a true intelligent A.B., the previous is of major importance ! Memorizing information can
be done by anybody and is basically the ‘labeling’ I discussed before. But self creating links is the path
to intelligence ! As stated earlier, all information the brain processes is subjective and if there would be
a way of playing with all these different kinds of information (linking), then and only then new ideas and
thoughts, which we define as intelligence can occur. This not only applies to organic creatures, like
humans and elephants or even aliens, but for all custom designed systems like an A.B. as well !
For humans, the (pre)frontal cortex plays an important role in creativity and creativity is actually another
word for playing with different sorts of information, always. For the A.B., a similar region will be needed
and I refer to this as ‘the play-zone’ for obvious reasons.
Since intelligence is mainly dependent of this play-zone, the first reflex is to preserve a lot of space for
this area in the A.B., but is this wise ? Fantasy, daydreaming, imagination and similar all are side
effects of this play-zone. Since all information is subjective and not all information combined results in
realistic or wanted ‘thoughts’, a limitation is best considered. A vision is in fact a sort of fantasy and
some visions are best avoided for an A.B. in our own interest ! The line between geniality and insanity
is often very slim and this is the reason why !
To keep control over an A.B. the ‘play-zone’ or digital (pre)frontal cortex is best kept small. Once
the results indicate it is safe or even required to enlarge this region, only then it may be
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enlarged !
One of the typical properties for a play-zone is that the data will be stored consciously until a satisfying
answer is present or the system no longer considers it as ‘interesting’. This deserves some more
explanation. Since the play-zone is in control of solving problems and one may assume that ‘the
problem’ is present in the play-zone because it is somehow important at that moment, it is necessary to
keep the information until the problem is actually solved. The human brain does this in a similar way.
Diverse experiments in memorizing information reveal that the basic information of an unsolved riddle is
better preserved than if solved. It is mainly this information being processed during sleep as well on a
subconscious level as described before in the topic on dreaming.
If the result is satisfying, then the information may be transferred to the subconscious level and it will at
first (not much experience) be hard to recall it. As stated before it will be the experience (multiple use)
giving it a higher priority and a stable link.
For diverse reasons solving ‘the problem’ might become obsolete. Someone else for example could
come up with a good solution or ‘the problem’ is considered too difficult and the motivation in trying to
solve it is absent. So the system must be capable of dropping this information and this is done
automatically by no longer giving it attention. This results in a weak link and chances are high that
relatively soon this will be overwritten with new data. For the digital brain, an extra flag indicating that
the information is ready to be overwritten should do the job.
The long-term memory

The same flag could also be used to indicate that the problem is satisfyingly solved and ready to be
transferred to the subconscious level !
One of the criticisms on the multi-store model of Atkinson and Shiffrin is that they claimed that only
rehearsal is capable of storing data in the long-term memory. In a lot of cases, this is so and can be
described as experience, but as I explained already in a previous chapter, the amygdala plays an even
more important role in storing information. It is the amygdala (or simplified : fear) indicating how fast
data will be stored in the long-term memory ! Threatening situations need to be stored faster and better
than neutral input. We now know that fear can reach from 0% fear (absolute trust) to 100% fear
(phobia). In between, at 50%, the point of balance between fear and trust is reached and fear-values in
that area are neutral. Neither fear nor trust is dominating and it could be described as boring,
meaningless and uninteresting information. Let’s label this as the neutral zone. The more the fear-slider
is away from this neutral zone (either fear or trust), the faster data will be stored. Have you ever tried to
learn new matter you have absolutely no interest in and which you can’t link to existing information and
for which no penalty is waiting if you fail the exam ? You will have to rehearsal an awful lot and will
forget it after a short time ! Where is the motive ?
It is also good to keep in mind that when the slider is to close to 100% fear, only the first impression will
be stored and the fight-or-flight state will be triggered causing tunnel vision (lots of adrenaline running
through the vanes). If I would ask you to memorize a poem at such a time, chances are small it will
work well, unless you somehow believe that memorizing this poem could take away the threat or buy
time ! It is also good to keep in mind that fear values closer to fear have a negative effect on recalling
information because at such moments the consciousness claims all attention and the actual storing and
recalling of information happens on subconscious level ! The A.B. will suffer from this as well since fear
and some hormones like adrenaline are required to obtain motivation !
An environment of trust on the other hand helps enormously in fast learning because only very few
processes will run on the conscious level and the attention can be fully focused on the matter (if there is
motivation) !
But what about movements for example ? We do not label these (no phonological store) and they are
somehow stored very well in the long-term memory ! Well, for this kind of processes the multi-store

model of Atkinson and Shiffrin as such works perfectly IF the input has also this ‘emergency-factor’ of
the amygdala (pain-driven) ! Badly falling is to be avoided quickly without endless rehearsals !
Visualization
So far we nearly touched the subject of visualization and it is well known that this helps much in better
storing data. For diverse reasons this topic deserves a closer look !
According to some, the visual information the human brain has to process is in the neighborhood of 8
Megabits per second. If our eyes were CCD-camera’s, I could agree but since that is not the case I find
it a daring statement.
The two main principles our vision is based upon is the simultaneous processing of ‘shapes’ and
‘colors’. The combination of both results in what we see. The link to an Artificial Brain is the way we
handle vision. We namely isolate shapes and like with everything in memory storage, the more we
repeat it, the better and more accurate it will be stored and recalled. Take the example of a camel and a
dromedary. At first, both will be treated as equal but once one knows the difference is in the number of
humps on the back, in future encounters, once the object camel is detected, the reflex will be to look at
the back to determine the number of bumps. This indicates that the shape of both a camel and
dromedary point to the same object, most likely ‘camel’, but further specifications are stored there to
make the distinction between both. Only people confronted regularly with these animals will notice other
differences and probably be capable of storing both shapes as separate objects.
We also have the capacity to place these shapes in an environment. If I would move a tree in your
garden from the left to the right, without you knowing, you would be surprised and have the reflex to
focus your attention on the changes. This indicates that instead of images we rather store scenario’s
composed out of shapes ! This approach has several advantages and the main benefit is that it requires
less storage ! That is also the reason why you probably wouldn’t remember half of the objects present
in a room after leaving the room. If a picture were stored, it would be a piece of cake to remember all !
And yes, I know the case of this young guy capable of drawing an almost perfect image of a city, in
detail, after flying over it for a short period. Due to a malfunction in the brain this boy is capable of this
and it is impressive ! But since not all is correct, combined with the fact that this cannot be done after a
single look, this also indicates that we do not use images as such in the visual processing ! So, if we do
not process images like a digital camera does, it is rather hard to state that the brain processes 8
Megabits per second, it is comparing apples with oranges …
Another argument in my defense is that when we look at a view, but from a 30° different angle, in most
cases we are still capable of recognizing all. Besides the fact that this would be impossible if images as
such were stored, it also shows that the compositions we make are often 3D, something I will not cover
in this document.
If everything is subjective, as I state several times throughout this document, this indicates that the
image we think we see, is not the actual image and that is the case. It is processed information and is
one of the reasons why illusionists like David Copperfield can do their tricks ! It is also the reason why
we are capable of visualization and that you most likely will not have a ‘real image’ during this
visualization but rather a composition of shapes. Try it out (best done with the eyes shut) and imagine a
cat on the back of a horse … … you see what I mean ! If I would ask you to imagine walking around in
a shop you frequently visit, the scene might be more detailed !
The above demonstrates that the ‘play-zone’ is best capable of ‘rendering’ fictive scenarios build out of
shapes. This allows a memory efficient way of visualization and a scenario, how funny it might be, will
be composed out of existing objects allowing the brain to do what it best does : linking ! That is the
reason why visualization is working so well to remember lists of words. A word as such has no
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meaning, but placed in a scenario it comes alive ! The basic memory-usage to deal with this ‘virtual’
scenario is rather small since it exists mainly out of pointer values, a space frame where all fits in and
often a ‘timetable’ in which order the scenario must be executed. Game-creators are familiar with this
principle …
Fragmentation
Pointers, pointers and pointers, that is the fundament of a powerful thinking system ! I mentioned it
before, but we first learn al 10 digits (0..9) and afterwards we use them in equations as pointers ! We do
not need to learn every equation by heart ! The same applies to the basic operators like +, -, /, * ! We
store little bits of information for everything we learn and add meaning to it. This meaning is actually
added information somehow connected to other information and therefore the storage system should
be capable of storing fragmented information in an optimized way ! For instance in a subtraction this
extra info could be that if the second number is higher than the first one, the two numbers can be
switched and a minus-sign must be added to the result indicating that this number is negative. This is
one of the main reasons I am such a fan of scripting ! The extra information can be stored (or removed)
well in a script and the script as such (basically a text-stream) can be stored fragmented within a binary
file allowing both fast storage as retrieval ! Since the amount of data will be substantial and in order to
keep all running smoothly, I prefer storage within binary files and optimize it for fragmentation ! A single
file for every object or script would become unmanageable !
Mirror neurons
A lot of theories exist on this topic but very few is known for sure. Primates have them and what distinct
these neurons from others is the ability to fire even if oneself is not performing ‘the task’. For humans it
is almost sure that somehow language is associated with mirror neurons but research also revealed
that it is gender dependent. Females would have more mirror neurons than males and this is, according
to some, the reason why women have better empathic skills then men. One of the theories on autism is
a lack of mirror neurons, causing the typical symptoms.
The question is if these are required to obtain our A.B. and I believe it is not obligated ! In the chapter
‘The diverse forms of consciousness’, I describe the imitation processes and pretty much of what is
dedicated to mirror neurons falls under this. Although it takes more than just the above mentioned ‘play-
zone’ and data available to create these imitation processes, they will be the foundation !
The labeling system I describe in this chapter is also somehow related to mirror neurons and this could
also explain some autism symptoms. If the labeling does not work correct, it is hard to link information
(learn) and to recall associated information (bad linking). This causes inferior learning possibilities and
bad assessment since both require the need of linking information and data available. Remember that
surprise is equal to something-out-of-the-pattern and has a factor of expectation as well (which is also
sort of pattern on top). Therefore if the labeling system is not working properly and ‘easy linking’ like
color-changes are not handled well, this could very well be the reason why autistic people have the
exaggerated surprise reflex (causing fear) when for instance a bus passes in another color than usual.
Another element indirectly indicates that the above-mentioned statement of the interconnection
between labeling and mirror neurons could be correct ! Both have one thing in common for sure :
language related ! Mirror neurons are linked to language and the phonological loop in the model of the
working memory from Baddeley and Hitch is too ! This last is nothing more or less than labeling …
What types of memory are needed ?

The diverse types of memory required for the A.B. will be dependent on the used techniques. It is
normal that diverse sorts of sensory memory will be present since the processing of the sensory input
itself will need memory ! The main memory will be based on the above and whether the need will rise to
have a central executive, episodic buffer or other ‘brain-related’ types of memory is to be considered at
that moment.

Attention
Introduction
Attention is in psychology and cognitive neuroscience a very well documented and researched topic. A
widely accepted definition for attention is : “Attention is the cognitive process of selective concentration
on one thing while ignoring the rest”.
Diverse dimensions of attention have been discovered like : active versus passive, internal versus
external and overt versus covert.
From all the areas, external attention is best documented since it is the easiest to obtain (relatively)
objective information for.
If we are unable to find a way an A.B. could focus attention on something, it is clear to all that this would
lead to a quick and unavoidable death of such a project !
Concentration
In the above-mentioned definition of attention we notice ‘selective concentration’. In my humble opinion
it would be better practice to focus research on concentration rather than on attention since, as the
definition indicates, attention is just a consequence of concentration !
Concentration is always a way of prioritizing processes and even deliberately suppressing parts of
information within one process (listening to a single voice ignoring all other ‘noises’ for instance). So,
the main question is what is the driving force behind concentration ? The answer is motivation ! Some
of the motivators are hard coded, others are based on the fear-trust part I earlier described in this
document, most of the time combined with the appreciation/punishment system. Surprise for example,
as illustrated earlier, is one of these build in motivators and covers most of the passive and external
dimensions (even part of covert attention). What is out of the ‘normal’ pattern can be life-threatening
and for most that is an important motivator !
Since all information is subjective and is handled similar by the brain, there is just one single way of
how concentration works : amplification and suppression :
• Amplification. I can just stare out the window not seeing much but a vague color and shape
scene. When I look at a specific topic, the colors become more intense and the shapes sharper
thanks to amplification (covert attention) ! If I am out during the night somewhere in an unknown
forest where a bear warning is recently launched, I will be concentrated to notify any possible
signs by a bear (ears, sight and touch). This causes these senses to be amplified. When a
friend, sneaking on me successfully, touching the back of my shoulder just slightly with one
single finger, chances are high that I will be within a split second in the top of a near standing
tree ! Due to the amplified senses, this slight touch feels more intense than when one is in a
relaxed state of mind. Of course, in this example, I had an expectation pattern that unsuspected
input probably originated from a bear nearby as well. Paranoia is therefore always a problem in
concentration (amplification) often accompanied by exaggerated expectations …
• Suppression. If everything would be amplified the problem would remain, therefore a
mechanism of suppression must be present as well.
This leads us to the absolute necessity of different tracks per input (and this input can be both
internal as external). If no isolation of the individual ‘objects’ is present, it is just not possible to
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amplify or suppress a single stream out of the complete stream, whether it is vision, sound or
even thoughts ! It could be if somehow filters were used but even then the problem would
remain. Assume two women speaking to you simultaneously, the frequency of both voices will
be likely within the same range, so filtering will offer no real solution and lead to fragmentized
sound instead of isolating the complete conversation.
Another fact substantiating my call from different tracks is the need to remain aware of the other
incoming information as well. It is technically possible to filter out a single voice via complex
filtering and just using one track, but how would the system be able at that moment to react on
other input in that range since all will be filtered out as if it was not there ! In other words the
system’s focus could not be changed in the same input area as long as the current focus
remains. If the system’s attention would be focused on a voice, the noise of an exploding
balloon (indicating a possible threat) would simply be ignored. A system used for astronomic
reasons focusing on one asteroid coming near the shuttle, would be unable to spot another one
maybe more threatening !
Although I did not touch this subject in the chapter on surprise, there is something we call
expectation. If you tell a joke, you expect others to laugh, otherwise you would be surprised
(and likely embarrassed too). This expectation actually is nothing more than a pattern as well. If
I do this, that will happen. The reason I mention this here is that we also need to determine at
what level the splitting in tracks need to be done. One of the possibilities is to keep the
complete incoming signal intact for the surprise mechanism and split it only afterwards. At that
moment if the above-mentioned balloon pops (something out of the normal pattern) the surprise
mechanism would be triggered causing “attention” to pay full attention on this. Another solution
could be to split all at the moment of incoming, causing all the tracks to be monitored separately
by the surprise mechanism. Problem for this is that there is no way of telling in advance how
many tracks will be needed and if this gets solved somehow, the splitting itself takes much time
and resources increasing the reaction time of the system, something to be avoided. The first
solution has the advantage that the splitting can be done in two channels : one channel for the
focus and one for all the rest, both monitored by the surprise mechanism. If the other person al
the sudden starts talking significantly louder without noticeable reason (not expected), one will
be surprised as well. This last remark reveals something important ! Both the surprise and
attention mechanism best operate on the same level instead of making surprise the conductor
of attention. Surprise will trigger attention, but the track of attention as well as the other track
must remain monitored by surprise !
ADHD for instance is pretty much concentration related and is something we need to avoid in the A.B. !
Even though it is believed that, for us humans, a major factor in this is a dopamine deficiency,
personally I consider two main system errors leading to similar behavior :
• A malfunction in the amplification mechanism causing the system to react on almost all stimuli,
even if they are not always correct ! It is not my favorite possibility, but the theoretically potential
is there.
• The surprise mechanism could also have a fundamental role in this. As described before this
mechanism is mainly based on detecting pattern changes and if somehow this mechanism sees
changes in patterns that are normally not triggered, the concentration will be drawn towards ‘the
surprise’. The hyperactive part could originate from this since the human body will produce
adrenaline for every surprise !
The main conclusion for the A.B. therefore is that both the surprise as the concentration mechanism will
need some experimenting before the right settings will be discovered and similar problems can be
avoided.

Appendix 1 : A sample diagram
Introduction
Although different schemes can be created based upon the information in this document, one of my
favorites is displayed below : The Input Diagram. On the next pages you will find the accompanying
explanation. As you will discover, the complexity lies not within the amount of required components but
rather in the interaction between all the components ! The diagram demonstrates all these required
components and the inter-relations. Too many sub-diagrams would be needed to cover the entire
concept and the functioning of each component separately and this is not in first instance the purpose.
Therefore, I took the freedom not to elaborate more than necessary. The diagram is not UML or any
other modeling language and therefore the shapes used in the diagram only have a pure visual
purpose.
The diagram
O 1
N
K
Digi LTP
Main Data Rewarding
M
I
L Acceptance
Data Temp Labeling 'Urgent' matter
Via A P
J Instincts
H
Aggression Digidala
1 G
Curiosity
D
Punishment E
F
Attention Surprise
1 C
Pain
B A
Play-Zone Motor
Digital Cerebellum output
(Internal thoughts)
Other internal
thoughts
Sensory
input
__________________________________________________

Explanation
In every brain, artificial or not, it is extremely hard to isolate a single event ! Everything is influencing
one-another continuously (parallel processing and multiple input-sources) and sometimes extra input
based upon the outcome of the original input in a single component arrives in another component in just
a split second making the isolation even tougher ! As if that was not enough, one must also keep in
mind that the diverse conscious-levels have an impact as well since they also perform parallel !
Digital Cerebellum (A) and the Play-zone (B)

The Digital Cerebellum (A) and the Play-zone (B) are the starting components.
• The Digital Cerebellum (A) stands for all possible sensory input and motor output. In other
words, all senses the system will have and the steering of all movements. It is clear that the
diverse subcomponents of the Digital Cerebellum (A) might require their own memory and even
internal data space to obtain a functional system. Keep in mind that this scheme is not an exact
copy of how the human brain works but a universal diagram to obtain an intelligent Artificial
Brain ! The arousal information, in the human brain for example, has a direct input in the
amygdala allowing a super-fast handling of this incoming information. Something I kept out of
the diagram since it is not required as such, but other senses the Artificial Brain possesses
(dependent on the use of the A.B.) might use the same principle. The only rule in this is that the
information (the sense) must have a fast result. A direct link of the outcome of the visual
information for example would be impossible. The handling of this information not only requires
other components like ‘Attention’ (E) but it is also relatively slow processed. Especially this last
argument takes away the reason one would consider a sense having direct interaction with the
Digidala (J) ! Nevertheless, I added a dashed line in the diagram from the Digital Cerebellum
(A) to the Digidala (J) illustrating this possibility.
• The Play-zone (B) is the component handling all internal thoughts as described in the main
document. Most of the time a single thought exists out of many parts of information and even
other internal thoughts. This information needs to be stored temporarily to process the thought
adequately. Although it might be tempting to see this as the ‘working memory’, it is more correct
to refer to this as the short-term memory. The location for the short-term memory therefore is
best located within the Play-zone (B). The Play-zone (B) itself is best viewed as (part of) the
working memory. The Play-zone (B) also has the ability to give direct instructions to the Digital
Cerebellum (A) as well, for example the instruction to move an arm up. Most of the time, the
main instruction is given on conscious level and the handling will be done on subconscious
level. It is not because an A.B. instructs the Digital Cerebellum (A) to move to a certain point a
couple of meters away that the system immediately arrives ! This will take time (lots of brain
processes) and one or more senses will be used to determine if the system has reached the
objective.
Since internal thoughts can contain virtually anything and only the system holds control over
this, a direct link to the Digidala (J) would work contra productive and is therefore best avoided.
Since all input comes from either one and all output will be (part of) a new thought (Play-zone (B)) or
motor output (Digital Cerebellum (A)) it is okay to take both as starting points.
Pain (C)
Although it is tempting to place Pain (C) in the Digital Cerebellum (A) it is not wise to do so as described
in the main document. Pain can have both a physical and an emotional origin and plays an important
role in motivation. Therefore both the Play-zone (B) as well as the Digital Cerebellum (A) need direct
access to the Pain (C) component. Pain (C) also needs to increase the aggression factor (Aggression
(H)) to give the system more chances in surviving. Pain (C) also will serve as new input for internal
thoughts (Play-zone (B)) and most of the time for Instincts (P) as well allowing the system to react on it.

Most people would connect the Pain (C) component to the Surprise (F) component as well and
understandable : if I stick you with a needle in the butt, you will be surprised ! The pitfall is that if we
would do so, the surprise mechanism would remain triggered as long as the pain is present and that is
not what is wanted ! In the diagram you can see the connection of both the Play-zone (B) and the
Digital Cerebellum (A) to Surprise (F) and either one needs to trigger Surprise (F) if something is out-of-
the-pattern (like (the first reaction on) sticking with a needle). Since both Surprise (F) and Pain (C)
trigger Attention (E), sticking with a needle causes full attention !
Surprise (F)
As seen in the previous item (Pain (C)), only the Play-zone (B) and the Digital Cerebellum (A) can
trigger the Surprise (F) mechanism. The reason why is that only these both components can notify a
change-in-the-pattern. If I stick with a needle unexpected, some neurons will be activated in that region
and the value will be much higher than the ‘normal’ level. In the Digital Cerebellum (A) all sensory input
is handled that way (even vision or sound). A loud explosion automatically triggers Surprise (F) and if
the complete sky all the sudden turns into another color or brightness (e.g. a nuclear explosion), I can
assure you that Surprise (F) will be triggered as well ! The same applies for the Play-zone (B) where an
unexpected thought or outcome will result in Surprise (F). As described in the main document, Surprise
(F) always triggers Attention (E). Actually, the only reason Surprise (F) exists is to foresee a mechanism
that can run in the background and activate Attention (E) ! This last remark could be interpreted as if
Surprise (F) is only operating on the subconscious level but that is incorrect. It needs to run in the
background for both conscious levels. Keep in mind that during dreaming (pure subconscious level) one
can have Surprise (F) too. Never woke up during a terrifying dream where al the sudden something
extreme happened and triggered the Surprise (F) mechanism …
It is also required that a link between Surprise (F) and (some sort of) short-term memory is present. In
order to detect changes, something to compare with is necessary. But to keep things simple I did not
draw that link in the diagram …
Attention (E)
In the main document I cover this and lots of possibilities exist like active, passive, overt, covert,
external or internal as base for triggering Attention (E). In the diagram something surprisingly pops-up :
the Digital Cerebellum (A) has no direct connection to Attention ! The reason for this is that in the Digital
Cerebellum (A) the primary processing of the sensory input is handled and at that level an
interconnection would trigger Attention (E) to all incoming information, something to be avoided in my
humble opinion ! Nevertheless, Attention (E) can indirectly be triggered via Pain (C) or Surprise (F). The
Play-zone (B) on the other hand requires a direct input in the Attention (E) component. It is the Play-
zone in charge of defining what internal processes are important and should be focused on at that
moment. Aggression (H) also requires a direct link to Attention for obvious reasons that the system
would be unable to defend itself. Pain (C), as mentioned before, also triggers Attention (E). Thanks to
the fact that the Play-zone (B) is capable of deliberately focusing on other ‘thoughts’ (giving a higher
priority of attention), Pain (C) can be suppressed as it is for humans. Otherwise Pain (C) would keep on
triggering Attention (E) and all other incoming signals would be ignored or an overflow of the system
would occur.
Curiosity (G)
Curiosity (G) does not require a link to Attention (E) because Curiosity (G) is a way of diminishing fear
to allow new experiences (as explained in the main document). For the same reason no link between
Surprise (F) and Curiosity (G) is present as well. It always is Attention (E) triggering Curiosity (G) and
Curiosity (G) triggering the Digidala (J) where the fear can be diminished if no other warning signals are
__________________________________________________

present indicating danger.
Digidala (J)
The Digidala component (J) handles everything about fear. It is closely connected to belief as well but
the Play-zone (B) plays an even more important factor in this. For reasons of clarity, I deliberately did
not include a link between these two components as it would requires a complete new diagram to
explain the functioning of belief and the interaction of the diverse components on this. The Digidala (J)
is also the center of data-transfer. All matter to be possibly stored or retrieved needs to pass through
the Digidala (J).
Although this is the input diagram, for simplicity reasons, I also did not include the retrieval part of data
either where retrieved information can and will function partially or complete as input. This would
overcomplicate the scheme and the number of interconnections would increase dramatically since the
Digidala (J) then triggers, depending on the diverse values of the included variables, a number of
components. Remember that isolating a single event is hard and most data exists out of diverse parts
of input as explained in the topic on ‘Fragmentation’ in the main document.
A two-way connection between the Digidala (J) and Attention (E) exists since some information
processed in the Digidala can be alerting and requiring the focus but this also will be more the case in
retrieved data. Nevertheless Curiosity (G) can diminish fear, processed in the Digidala and this must be
ventilated somehow and a good way is re-requesting Attention (E) this time with the ‘better’ values
incorporated. Therefore the link from the Digidala (J) towards Attention (E) must be included. In most
input cases Attention (E) will pass the signal towards the Digidala (J) and dependent on a number of
factors it will be classified as ‘Urgent’ (if the fear factor is far away from the neutral zone) and a direct
link to the Digi LTP (Long Term Potentiation) (N) will be the result allowing the Digi LTP (N) to store this
information immediately and forever. If the input is information from the Digital Cerebellum (A), both
conscious and subconscious, like certain movements, this data will go directly from the Digidala (J) to
Data Temp (M) without Labeling (L). Dependent on the characteristics of the information, it will be fast
overwritten allowing the Data Temp (M) to remain manageable or it will go to the Digi LTP (N) for
possible definite storage in the Main Data (O), but later more on this.
Labeling (L)
If the incoming data somehow can be labeled, it will be done ! As explained in the main document
labeling is the way different sorts of information can be linked together regardless their origin. This is
handled in the Labeling component (L) and is well described in the main document.
Data Temp (M)

If the accompanying values of the diverse variables are not high enough to instruct the Digidala (J) to
consider it as ‘Urgent’, no immediate and definitive store of the information is required and it will be
temporarily stored in this component. “Last used date” and “Times used” will increase and if the area is
full, data which is the least important (long time no use or low number of uses) will be overwritten. Since
most data exists out of some information and a number of pointers towards other information, it is very
well possible that some of these pointers refer to overwritten information and an incomplete ‘thought’
can be the result, as if it is for us humans. It is wise to compare this component with the hippocampus.
Since it is the Digidala (J) and the Digi LTP (N) which are the main key-players in storing the data
definitive in the Main Data (O), based upon a number of variables, the smart reader will see that the
Data Temp (M) component is the storage part of the working memory !
Digi LTP (Long Term Potentiation) (N)

Long Term Potentiation (LTP) is the process in the human brain allowing information to be stored for a
real long time (multiple years up to a lifespan). The Digi LTP (N) is the component in the digital brain

allowing the same to happen. If a number of variables reaches a certain point, as explained earlier, the
information can be considered as important enough to store definitively.
Main Data (O)

The Main Data (O) module is, as to be expected, the place where all definite data is stored. The reason
for the division in two data modules (Data Temp (M) and Main Data (O)) is to guarantee speed and
safety. The data in Main Data (O) must be searched first in retrieving data and if no data is found there,
only then the Data Temp component (M) may be searched.
Notice that minor important information used once a week for example may remain in the Data Temp
(M) for many years without ever being transferred to Main Data (O) or being overwritten. If the “Times
used” parameter is not the lowest in the Data Temp (M), no overwriting will occur as long as other
(candidate) data is available with a lower “Times used” value. Since this data is used from time to time,
the last used parameter will be recent enough to keep it undeleted for a long time ! With this information
in the back of the head it is wise to consider the temporarily character of the Data Temp with a large
margin …
The exact dimensions of both data containers is something that will depend on the use of the system
and in order to find an optimal balance between both some experimenting will be required. A too large
Data Temp (M) or Main Data (O) has no disadvantages as such except for space requirements and a
possible slower access speed. A too small Data Temp (M) will cause the system to overwrite existing
data too fast and a too small Main Data (O) will obviously lead towards a diminished learning capacity
and might even cause safety and surviving problems. The same principle of overwriting exists here as it
does in the Data Temp module (M).
Acceptance (I)
As explained in the main document Acceptance (I) has a similar purpose as Curiosity (G) : moving the
fear-slider towards trust. Since input from the Digital Cerebellum (A) is not completely processed yet, it
would be unwise to give this a direct link towards Acceptance (I). Therefore the more logical choice is to
provide only the Play-zone (B) a direct link to Acceptance (I).
Acceptance (I) has a link to the Digidala (J) in order to allow modifying the fear-slider.
Notice as well that the requirement of a pre-juvenal phase (as explained in the main document) can be
achieved by making the Acceptance component (I) dependent of some digi-hormone. In this pre-juvenal
phase everything is generally more accepted and once the system must start learning by itself (the
juvenal phase) it is best not to accept all ‘just because’. It is hard to prove, but I wouldn’t be surprised
that this is what is causing the typical rebellion behavior of teenagers …
Rewarding (K) and Punishment (D)

In the diagram you will see that Rewarding (K) has a direct link to the Digidala (J) and Attention (E),
whereas Punishment (D) requires Pain (C) or Aggression (H) as intermediates. This latter transitional
stage is required because Punishment (D) causes not all Pain (C) and is not the only trigger-source for
Aggression (H) either. Nevertheless, Punishment (D) will always result in (emotional or physical) Pain
(C) and/or some sort of Aggression (H) (to react on the pain).
The input for both comes via Attention (E) (the blue colored circle labeled ‘1’) and remember that this
can happen on both conscious and subconscious level ! A variable for both will determine in which
degree some input will be considered as ‘with rewarding’ or ‘with punishment’. Those variables are
continuously changing dependent on a lot of actors like ambiance, pain, aggression, etc and the one
__________________________________________________

with the higher value wins at that moment. In that way rewarding pain can lead to expanding the limits,
both psychologically (difficult theoretical matter, overcoming some emotional scarves, …) and physical
(revalidating, top-sporting).
The disadvantage of this is that ‘circumstances’ (a single brain-process is inexistent) help defining these
two variables allowing strange combinations to occur like sadomasochism or loving punishment !
However for the digital brain one could consider to implement a time limit for acceptance of the Digital
Cerebellum (A) input in that equation. This will allow the system to be appreciated, punished and
rewarded for physical movements required in learning the motor output but will no longer allow these
signals once all motored skills are present. However, this would cause such a drawback in possible
future (motor skill) learning that it is to be avoided ! A better solution is to incorporate a system that
blocks out the signal once a certain pain value is reached, as happens in the human brain in the
amygdala. In our diagram this is the link from Pain (C) to the Digidala (J). The disadvantages of the
latter solution are identical to human problems related to this approach. Some extreme emotional pains
can and will be blocked out … … and the possibility of “loving punishment” remains !
It is good practice to foresee a way of externally triggering both directly as well.
Instincts (P)
Since instincts are basically there to protect the system it is logical that the triggering component is the
Digidala (J). All other important actors like Pain (C) and Aggression (H) have a direct link to the
Digidala. It will be clear to all that interaction between the different processes of a single instinct might
be mandatory and therefore the possibility of an “action trigger” should be included allowing fast
response.
In the main document I mention the preferred use of scripting outside the Digital Cerebellum (A) (even
partially within) and one of the advantages of this is that someone externally can (re)define new
instincts after the system is up and running.
Conscious versus subconscious

The main target of the subconscious level is to assist the conscious level, as explained in the main
document. I also explain that both are identical with the exception of storing and retrieving data, which
best happens centralized at subconscious level. In the diagram the dotted light gray rectangle therefore
contains the required components best preserved only at subconscious level. In reality once the
conscious level reached the gray zone, the signal is passed over to the subconscious level.

Epilog
Is it really possible that based on these fundamentals a truly intelligent A.B. can be created ? The
answer is YES! I will even state that any intelligent creature one will ever encounter will have these
fundamentals ! Dependent on the specifics of the creature, other sensory input and motor output will be
present but the same fundamentals will work in the background and yes, it might be possible that more
levels than just the conscious and subconscious will be present (apart from the above and collective
consciousness) …
What about love, respect and so many important actors I did not mention in this document ? Well, all of
these are actually combinations of what is covered and often have a semantic or philosophical
explanation. It is best not to overcomplicate things and first learn to walk before trying to run a marathon
…
As you will have discovered by now, I am not such a fan of writing and therefore everything is rather
concentrated, my excuses for that. However, don’t you hate books with more paper than reasonable
text ? I surely do and since I am not bound by any publisher, requiring a certain amount of words or
pages, I had the opportunity to do it my way !
Special thanks go to my lovely wife and wonderful daughter who had and have to live with such a
weirdo like myself ! It surely is not always easy for them … … but as weak defense, I can officially state
that it is not always easy to be me either ! I also thank the many dogs, cats, sheep and innocent people
whom I observed during those twenty years of research to doublecheck things over and over and who
gave me so much valuable input.
__________________________________________________

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Geert Masureel

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Creativity, dreams, imagination and thinking........................................................................... 28

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© Copyright 2005-2007 Geert Masureel - Page 6 of 60

It’s all about linking and comparison

Linking, comparison and decisions

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Thanks time and space !

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Scripting is the answer !

Other advantages of scripting

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The main protector

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© Copyright 2005-2007 Geert Masureel - Page 14 of 60

Emotions and feelings

Some free thoughts on emotions

© Copyright 2005-2007 – Geert Masureel – geert.masureel@theartificialbrain.com - Page 15 of 60

Feelings, the derivatives of fear

Let’s start with some 'negative' samples :

 Happiness. Trust that 'justice' is done for oneself.

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Disgust and surprise

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Curiosity and acceptance

© Copyright 2005-2007 Geert Masureel - Page 18 of 60

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Since aggression is hormone-driven, it is best implemented in the A.B. as a global variable. Is it

© Copyright 2005-2007 Geert Masureel - Page 20 of 60

Believe, the driving force !

I simply didn't see it …

Believe, always believe …

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The three states of believe and doubt

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Some free thoughts

Traditionally the consciousness is divided in P- (Phenomenal) and A- (Access) consciousness.

© Copyright 2005-2007 Geert Masureel - Page 24 of 60

Another approach towards answers

Conscious versus subconscious

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© Copyright 2005-2007 Geert Masureel - Page 26 of 60

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Creativity, dreams, imagination and thinking

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Impact on the digital brain

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© Copyright 2005-2007 Geert Masureel - Page 30 of 60

Unexpected processes of the subconscious

Intuition or following the own instincts

Imitation and insight

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© Copyright 2005-2007 Geert Masureel - Page 32 of 60

What about hormones ?

An odd question : is puberty required ?

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The impact on the digital brain