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To sum some concepts from Thursday’s class, up we have proprioreceptors that send information about our place in our environment to the brain in reafferent loops, but not to the i-box (which explained why we did not know what angle our elbows were resting on the chair without looking at them), and as we make outputs this gets transmitted as reafferent information looped back to the nervous system which influence what inputs we are exposed to. Experiments showing flying in birds is not an innate behavior have implications for similar behaviors such as walking in humans. We have central pattern generators and preprogrammed patterns in our nervous system. Does this affect our destiny?

  If we have preprogrammed patterns of behavior in our nervous system, for example the pattern of how we walk, some people naturally walk faster with more energy or slower and more laid back and the pattern of walking is very consist and different for each individual… or in general if our overall body movements (something else pretty different and consistent per individual) are predetermined, how fast and slow we move, how animated we are, this would probably effect how people perceive us through our body language. The way people perceive us affects our life experiences. So is a certain amount of our life pre-determined by these central pattern generators?  

Another take on are we in control of our destiny is that we have proprioreceptors which send back sensory info to the brain but not the ibox. Does this mean there is some kind of executive functioning higher level program than the ibox that we are not conscious for that controls and guides our movements and makes certain decisions for us. We consciously only have control over the ibox, but does the rest of the nervous system control us? Are we in control of our own bodies? Think about it, if someone throws something unexpectedly at you, and you put your hands up to cover your face, did YOU put your hands up, do you remember thinking about putting your hands up? For me, my hands go up before I can fully comprehend what was going on possibly because another part of my nervous system sensed the danger before my ibox did. In addition, the neurons aren’t so seemingly simple as we first thought. They do analyze EPSP’s and IPSP’s, were compared to mini-computers, and are capable of complex and intelligent functions. How much control do we have our bodies?