Internal (hidden) Information Flow

Information is usually transmitted from the place of origin (the source) to the places where it is used (the destination). In the brain and the body it is possible to see the sources of the flow, such as the eyes, and the destination of the flow, such as the muscles attached to the limbs. It is much more difficult to follow the flow, since it seems to spread out through the brain, and then to converge again.

• For this investigation, the eyes are the main source of information
• The muscles controlling bone movement and joint rotation are the main destination of information

Information is always encoded with some form of (data) representation

• Neural activity corresponds to electrical pulses in nerves
• Neural firing takes time to propagate from the brain to the muscles
• The patterns of neural activity may be transformed on the way from the brain to the muscles
• the transmission may be via dedicated wiring, also known as labelled lines
• the transmission may be via shared channels analogous to a network

Information is commonly transformed from one form of representation to another

• the transformation may compress the data
• The compression can be loss less, or it can be lossy (less precise than the original data)
• If there is no loss, it is theoretically possible to reconstruct the original data in full and precise detail
• Language is a form of compressed data representation
• languages have words (codes), grammars, semantics, and interpretation
• We are generalizing the concept of language to be able to include similar but non-human constructs (such as computer languages).