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Our discussion about set points and motor movement brought up the issue of control and individuality. I wondered how we can have control over what we do if there is no “coordinator”? If there are set-points determining how your behavior is formed and a degree of randomness associated with our actions? It is hard to imagine the brain working without relating it to yourself, without thinking of it as something that you do and have control over. I feel I should be able to change my set-points and should be able to influence my learning.

After this class though I started thinking about individuality differently. What if these ideas about randomness of behavior, the unconscious part of our learning and coordination within our brain would actually account for our individuality? Following the Harvard Law of Animal behavior it might be that the coordination between different parts of the body, the fact that we do not have one place for movement but several, actually accounts for diversity. The unpredictability and influences of all the different factors gives an individual the freedom to explore and expand on what he/she knows. Since nothing is set in stone, and since we learn through experiencing new things and comparing the inputs with the outputs in our reafferent loops we create our individual selves. Could the unconscious learning, the inputs reflecting the outputs instead of taking away control give us the freedom that we need to behave “as we damned well please”?