(And please note my ‘excuse-me’ at the end of this post!)
The first:
PetSmart Grreat Choice Dog Food Recall of February 2017
February 8, 2017 — PetSmart has issued a voluntary recall of one production lot of Grreat Choice Adult Dog Food with Chicken and Rice Classic Ground due to possible metal contamination.1
What’s Recalled?
The recalled product includes:
Grreat Choice Adult Dog Food with Chicken and Rice Classic Ground
Size: 13.2 ounce cans
UPC: 7-3725726116-7
Best By Date: 8/5/19
Lot Code: 1759338
The Best By date is found on the bottom of the can.
What to Do?
The company writes:
Please stop feeding this product to your pet and bring any remaining cans affected by this recall to your nearest PetSmart for a full refund. We recommend the other varieties of Grreat Choice canned dog foods as alternate options until this product is once again available.
For more information, please contact PetSmart Customer Service at 1-888-839-9638.
U.S. citizens can report complaints about FDA-regulated pet food products by calling the consumer complaint coordinator in your area.
No, that subtitle is wrong. It should be: Science brings to light the wonderful history of dogs and humans!
Approximately seven years ago I published a series of posts. Each post was a segment of a BBC Horizon documentary entitled: The Secret Life of the Dog. Inevitably as so often happens when BBC programmes unofficially find their way on to YouTube those videos have long disappeared from sight.
So imagine the joy when Jean and I were browsing the web site Top Documentary Films to find that the full BBC Horizon episode was available.
The documentary is an hour long and is unmissable viewing for anyone who is interested in the history of mankind back in the days of hunting and gathering. If you are also a lover of dogs and you haven’t seen the programme then, in two words WATCH IT!
Here’s a clip from the Horizon episode. A deeply emotional and moving clip.
Now I can’t insert the Top Documentary video as I can with a YouTube video.
But I can link to it, and republish the written introduction.
We have an extraordinary relationship with dogs – closer than with any other animal on the planet. But what makes the bond between us so special?
Research into dogs is gaining momentum, and scientists are investigating them like never before. From the latest fossil evidence, to the sequencing of the canine genome, to cognitive experiments, dogs are fast turning into the new chimps as a window into understanding ourselves.
Where does this relationship come from? In Siberia, a unique breeding experiment reveals the astonishing secret of how dogs evolved from wolves. Swedish scientists demonstrate how the human/dog bond is controlled by a powerful hormone also responsible for bonding mothers to their babies.
Why are dogs so good at reading our emotions? Horizon meets Betsy, reputedly the world’s most intelligent dog, and compares her incredible abilities to those of children. Man’s best friend has recently gone one step further – helping us identify genes responsible for causing human diseases.
Trust me, if you haven’t seen this documentary and you have dogs in your life it will change the way you appreciate and love your wonderful dogs.
I’m going to close this post with a photograph you have seen many times before, via the home page of this blog.
Simply because I know for thousands of you who have dogs in your lives there is nothing more special, nothing more intimate, nothing more magical than the eye-to-eye bond between your dog and you.
The most incredibly relationship we humans have ever had with an animal.
Tomorrow, I am going to repeat a post that first appeared on Learning from Dogs seven years ago. A beautiful documentary explaining in clear, scientific ways how important has been the relationship between the dog and humans.
But for today, as a ‘warm up’ to tomorrow’s post, I wanted to share an essay that appeared on The Conversation blogsite a little over a week ago and is republished within the terms of The Conversation site.
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How man’s best friend is helping cancer treatment
By Nicole Ehrhart Professor of Veterinary Medicine, Colorado State University
February 2, 2017The author, center, and Dr. Anna Conti, left, and student Kelsey Parrish with Conti’s Basset hound, Picasso, who had surgery for cancer. Via Colorado State University. William Cotton/CSU Photography, Author provided
“A person can learn a lot from a dog, even a loopy one like ours. Marley taught me about living each day with unbridled exuberance and joy, about seizing the moment and following your heart… Mostly, he taught me about friendship and selflessness and, above all else, unwavering loyalty.”
Isn’t it true? We learn so much from our dogs. But beyond what man’s best friend can teach us about enjoying life, they share something else with us. Cancer diagnoses in dogs are on the rise, as are cancer diagnoses in people. In fact, canine cancer is the leading cause of death in pets over the age of 10 years.
This confluence, it turns out, can be beneficial to cancer research. A field of study known as “comparative oncology” has recently emerged as a promising means to help cure cancer. Comparative oncology researchers study the similarities between naturally occurring cancers in pets and cancers in people in order to provide clues to treat cancer more effectively.
In fact, phase 1 and 2 clinical trials in comparative oncology are underway at 22 sites across the country, including Colorado State University, where I conduct research and am a surgical oncologist for animals.
Research in this field, involving veterinarians, physicians, cancer specialists and basic scientists, is leading to improved human health and more rapid access to effective cancer treatment than has been previously possible through traditional cancer research approaches.
As a species, dogs have strong physiologic and genetic similarities to people, much more so than mice, who do not typically live long enough for us to know whether they naturally get cancer. We do know that some rodent species, such as pet rats, can get cancer, but predators typically end a field mouse’s life while it is still young. The laboratory mice typically used by scientists are injected with cancer rather than it occurring naturally in their bodies.
Just as scientists officially mapped the human genome, or the complete set of genetic instructions, in 2003, scientists decoded the canine genome. They discovered that dogs have greater than 80 percent genetic similarity to humans, versus only 67 percent for mice.
In addition, cancers such as bone cancer, lymphoma and bladder cancer that spontaneously arise in pet dogs are microscopically and molecularly identical to cancers in people. Many of the genetic mutations that drive cells to become cancerous in people are the same mutations that cause cancer in dogs. In fact, when viewed under a microscope, it is impossible to distinguish between a tumor from a human and a dog.
In addition, dogs provide a large and varied population to study, important in the study of medicine. Individual dogs who develop cancer are as different from one another as are humans. Whereas laboratory mice are essentially identical twins to each other and live in a highly regulated environment, the variation among different dog breeds, home environments, diet and overall lifestyle translate into a population diversity very similar to that in humans.
Today, most pet dogs receive high-quality health care into old age and dog owners are highly motivated to seek out improved options for the management of cancer in their companions, and are also motivated to minimize side effects.
Similarities in response to treatment, too
Picasso at the James L. Voss Veterinary Teaching Hospital, Colorado State University. Author provided., Author provided.
This genetic diversity and sharing of similar DNA, physiology, microscopic structure and molecular features between dogs and humans has presented cancer researchers with a key opportunity. Dogs not only develop similar types of cancers as humans, but their cancer responds to treatments in similar ways.
This means that new cancer treatments first shown to be effective in canine cancers can frequently be predicted to have a similar benefit in human cancer patients. As a result, researchers now recognize that new drug trials in dogs with cancer will result in therapeutic discoveries that are highly “translatable”; that is, more likely to predict “real-life” medical responses in human cancer patients.
By studying how cancer responds in dogs, scientists are gaining a better understanding of how new cancer drugs not only treat the cancer but also influence the patient’s overall quality of life during treatment. This benefits dog owners, by providing access to promising new cancer treatments for their pets with cancer, and benefits human cancer patients by providing a rapid way to collect crucial data needed for FDA approval.
Dogs with cancer are helping kids
For example, a bone cancer known as osteosarcoma is so similar between dogs and people that
The author performing surgery on a dog. Author provided. Colorado State University., Author provided.
intensive research in canine osteosarcoma has led to several breakthroughs in treating osteosarcoma in children. Limb-saving surgical techniques for safe and effective reconstruction following bone tumor surgery in dogs are now the standard of care in children following bone tumor surgery.
More recently, a form of immunotherapy was shown to drastically improve survival in dogs with bone cancer by delaying or altogether preventing spread of the cancer to the lungs. As a result of the success in dogs, the FDA granted fast-track status to the same treatment for use in humans last April.
Fast-tracking was developed by the FDA to support accelerated approval for promising treatments, especially for serious and life-threatening conditions. A clinical trial in children with osteosarcoma is scheduled to begin this year at multiple pediatric cancer centers throughout the United States.
These types of discoveries demonstrate that our furry companions have a crucial role in teaching us new ways to help all victims in the war against cancer – with two legs or four.
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As I said in my introduction, more on this theme tomorrow.
The second set of photographs by Russian photographer Andy Seliverstoff.
The first set of these stunning photographs was last week. I shall repeat the background to the photographer that was also published a week ago.
Little Kids and Big Dogs
Andy Seliverstoff is a 58-year-old professional photographer from St. Petersburg, Russia. A few years ago some of Seliverstoff’s friends asked him to take photos of their daughter Alice in a park. They had their gigantic Great Dane, Sean, with them, so they decided to incorporate him into the photos. After seeing the results, he knew he was on to something special.
Seliverstoff did another shoot with a child featuring big dogs, and told BuzzFeed News that he was “deeply touched” by the work. That was four years ago and he’s been a dog photographer ever since.
The project has become his passion, which he chronicles in a book called “Little Kids and Their Big Dogs.“
All of the photos are taken in St. Petersburg. Its extensive parks and colder climate help create some spectacular shots.
Seliverstoff said the goal of the series wasn’t just to create beautiful pictures, but to capture the interaction between the children and the animals.
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Beautiful almost beyond words! These were sent to me by Dordie from next door. Dearest Dordie has sent me another set of stunningly magical photographs that I will be sharing with you from next Sunday for a few weeks.
This came in late yesterday afternoon, Pacific Time.
This was the email that was sent out.
Evanger’s Dog and Cat Food Company of Wheeling, Illinois, has announced it is voluntarily recalling specific lots of its pet food due to its potential to be contaminated with pentobarbital.
To learn which products are affected, please visit the following link:
If one goes to that Evanger’s Recall Link then this is what you will read. It is republished in full.
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Evanger’s Dog Food Recall of February 2017
February 3, 2017 — Evanger’s Dog and Cat Food Company, Inc. of Wheeling, Illinois, is voluntarily recalling specific lots of its Hunk of Beef product due to potential contamination with the deadly drug, pentobarbital.
Pentobarbital can affect animals that ingest it, and possibly cause side effects such as drowsiness, dizziness, excitement, loss of balance or nausea — or in extreme cases, death.
What’s Being Recalled?
Although pentobarbital was detected in a single lot, the company is recalling all related Hunk of Beef products manufactured the week of June 6 through June 13, 2016.
The affected lots numbers that start with 1816E03HB, 1816E04HB, 1816E06HB, 1816E07HB, and 1816E13HB, and have an expiration date of June 2020.
The second half of the barcode reads 20109, which can be found on the back of the product label.
Where Was the Product Sold?
The affected products were sold both online and also distributed to retail locations only in the following states:
California
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
Indiana
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
New York
Ohio
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Washington
Wisconsin
About the Recall
The recall affects 5 lots of food that were produced from its supplier’s lot of beef, which is specifically used for the Hunk of Beef product and no other products.
To date, five dogs reportedly became ill. And one of the five dogs died after consuming the product with lot number 1816E06HB13. [Ed: My emphasis]
Evanger’s is proactively issuing a recall so as not to risk potential exposure to pentobarbital in the product.
According to Evanger’s, all suppliers of meat products are USDA approved.
The insists the beef supplier provides the company with beef chunks from cows that are slaughtered in a USDA facility.
Evanger’s continues to investigate how the contaminant entered its raw material supply.
Because it sources its meat products from suppliers that are USDA approved and since no other products have reported any problems, the company is not extending the recall to other supplier lots.
According to Evanger’s, this is the first recall event for the company in its 82 years of manufacturing.
What to Do?
Although it has been verified that little or no product remains on store shelves, consumers are asked to return recalled product to the place of purchase for a full refund.
Consumers with questions may contact the company at 847-537-0102 between 10 AM and 5 PM Central Time, Monday through Friday.
U.S. citizens can report complaints about FDA-regulated pet food products by calling the consumer complaint coordinator in your area.
I will, of course, continue to publish every dog food alert that comes into my in-box. But don’t let that stop you from signing up for recall alerts on your own account.
Finally, if any of you are users of Evanger’s Hunk of Beef dog food and want to share your experiences then I shall be very happy to publish them here for the wider benefit of every single person who loves dogs!
I was talking about how our brains are mathematical organs at our last Freethinkers meeting in Grants Pass and Marcia from our local group emailed me the following:
Or, more specifically, what Diego meant for Laura Bruzzese. (This will be the second in the series We Shall Not Forget Them.)
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Dog Love In August
August is the start of the dying season. Garden things begin their slow shrink into the earth, the days grow shorter and cooler, lazy ocean- or mint-scented summer days snap into rigid schedules of work and school.
August is also the month that I lost Diego, my first dog. You can get acquainted with Diego here, a post I wrote a few days before he died. But I would like to share a little more now, on the second anniversary of his departure.
Diego was a poser, in a very literal sense of the word. He loved having his picture taken; in fact, he insisted on it whenever he saw me holding the camera. This picture, for example: it was taken the day I brought my daughter home from the hospital, the day after 21 hours of hard labor produced an eight-and-a-half-pound baby who actually stopped halfway out of my body, looked around, and scowled before resuming her reluctant journey onto the planet. (She was 12, twelve days overdue, FYI all you mothers out there who can surely feel my pain.)
There is something screaming in the bed. Please make it stop before it explodes.
I laid baby Isabella down, stepped back with the camera, looked up, and there he was: Diego, staring. Fifty-eight pounds of solid, unmoving dog. Insisting that I photograph him, too, with this creature that he wasn’t sure if he should guard against or lick. This child who personified the singular emotion of furious for the first nine weeks of her life (if she was not sleeping or eating, she was screaming).
Oh, hi Aunt Rosie. I know you’ve passed on, but I’ll bet you can still hear that screaming baby wherever you are.
When my doula told me that the colic or distemper or petite innards or whatever it was making Isabella so unhappy would resolve itself in about nine weeks, I said oh, that’s nice. But I won’t be alive for nine weeks of this. I’ll be in an asylum acquainting myself with a selection of opiates, or at the bottom of the mighty Rio Grande; so behold, an orphan.
But somehow, I survived. And Diego was part of it.
You see, from the very beginning, it was just us — the two of us, the three of us. I was abandoned by my husband before Isabella was born, a painful time that I don’t often write about.
Within a matter of weeks, the married-and-expecting life I’d known was gone, and I was left to fumble around with the pieces, a wreckage sitting on a pile of broken glass in the dark. The small hours of it were the worst, waking up alone and panicked in the middle of the night wondering how (or if) I would live through the next weeks and years. And Diego was always there, a silent and comforting presence curled at the foot of the bed or coming up to lick my tears if I was crying, which was basically all the time. He was always there.
I have a teenager now and those days seem ancient. While I rebuilt my life, Isabella grew up and Diego grew old. And finally, in his sixteenth year, he began to deteriorate to the point of pain. I knew he wouldn’t be with me much longer and I had already called the vet to ask her how it worked — when do you know it’s time? Do I take him to the office, or do you come to the house? Will he feel anything? I planned to schedule an appointment soon; I hadn’t had to make this decision before and it was a very painful.
On the morning of August 9 before I left for work, I told Diego that we would have to say good-bye soon because his body wasn’t working right anymore. I told him that I loved him and it was okay for him to go. Over and over I told him I loved him.
Less than two hours later, he drowned in the pond.
I think it was his way of avoiding the vet (he hated the clinic), and maybe sparing me that particular pain. I’m not going to say that I wasn’t devastated. But rather than remembering the urgent phone call at work from Isabella, or the vision of him when I got home, or my step-father struggling to carry the terrible weight of him away, I like to imagine Diego simply being received by the fish and toads. Delivered from his pain by warm water, wrapped in a blanket of lilies.
Anyone who has cared for pets perhaps knows that there is one, a special one, who will always occupy the largest piece of real estate in your heart, though others may follow. That was Diego for me.
But now we’re lucky enough to share our lives with another dog, the rascally, neurotic, road trip-loving Velma. I’ll end this post with a short video of her that reminds me of exactly what I love about dogs: their absolute and abundant connection with life, free of judgement, agenda, or desire to be anything other than what they are. That’s what I think of every time I see Velma in her Writhe of Exquisite Happiness. Perfect contentment of being.
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Laura wrote and published this back in August, 2012. But her words, emotions and feelings are those that never age. Indeed, I would add her courageous words.
Last year I instigated a new ‘page’ on Learning from Dogs. It was entitled We Shall Not Forget Them. It was introduced by me as follows:
For millions, the relationship between a person and their dog is precious beyond words. Do you still grieve the loss of your wonderful dog? Let us all know what your dog meant to you. Write whatever you want. Leave it as a thought to this page.
Then it became clear that this was not going to work properly. Because each note of remembrance was, in effect, a comment. And I discovered that under WordPress it is not possible to insert a photograph. I struggled to think of a better way of doing it. Then earlier yesterday it came to me.
I will make each message of condolence, each reflection on how special the dog was, a new and separate blog post. In other words, each dog gets their own post for a full day.
Then each time a condolence is sent in, I will update the We Shall Not Forget Them post with the name of the departed dog, the date and a link to the blog post that has the details and memories of the animal.
I hope that makes sense!
To underline how it is going to work, I am starting off with the words of loss, and photographs, of Jim and Janet’s Buddy.
That post will be published in an hour’s time and will be linked to as I described above.
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So I am reaching out to Susan, Asha, Katrina and Whisperofthedarkness – each of you has left a memory as a comment to here.
Please do email me some photographs and any further recollections you would like me to post, and I will do for you as I have done for Buddy.
(Laura, I shall go to that link and republish what you wrote.)
I was emailed as follows back on the 25th January:
Hi Paul,
I hope all is well with you and Jean and the furry kids. About a month ago, you had mentioned that you would welcome a post about Maggie in honor of her 9th birthday.
Maggie was very enthusiastic about this venture and managed to write a little blog with her advice on aging. I have enclosed the result for your review.
Her birthday is on 2/3. Thank you so much for giving us this opportunity. Take care!
Kind Regards,
Susan & Maggie
Ergo, this coming Friday is Maggie’s birthday.
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Maggie’s Advice on Aging
Hello! My name is Maggie.
I have a much longer AKC registered moniker that Mom & Dad christened me with but it’s ridiculous so I just shortened it.
Anyway, Paul was so gracious to invite me to do a post for all of you good folks at Learning from Dogs. Since I have a birthday coming up (in case you are wondering, I’ll be 9), I thought what better topic to write about than aging.
To me, age is just a number. I know that is a cliché but it’s the truth! I don’t know what other dogs my age do but I’m not ready to just lay down on the couch. Not me! I’ve got too many things to do and way too many places to see.
Here are some of my tips on how you can feel like a puppy:
Take your vitamins – I will admit. After Mom and Dad replaced my favorite brand of fish oil with another one that didn’t taste so good, I refused to take the pill. They would try and hide it in my food but I would just find it and set it to the side. I mean, who do they think they are dealing with? They finally wised up and now I am back to my brand. Some of you might be thinking, fish oil, yuck! Seriously, I swear by it. It promotes heart health and it keeps my coat silky smooth. I also have these tasty Milk Bone vitamins that help me to stay healthy and they even improve joint mobility! That way I will be keeping the ‘rents on their toes for years to come.
Get off the couch – Yes, I like couch time with my Mom and Dad but I love nothing more than to lollygag in our gigantic backyard playing ball. I will do this for hours! My bipeds on the other hand, they have their limits. I also enjoy going for walks in this cool, new park near our house. It’s in the woods and I love all the places I can explore. Just being active is not only good for you but it keeps you engaged and learning new things all the time.
Annual checkups – Going to the vet isn’t fun. I don’t know anyone that enjoys it. However, I know that everything they do for me keeps me healthy. The ‘rents see to it that I get my yearly vaccinations and physical. It keeps me in tip top shape so I will be barking at them for years to come. Mom loves it when I yell at her.
Watch your diet – Okay. I will admit this one bites. If I had my way, I would be chowing down on all kinds of good things like meat, cheese, bacon…. the list goes on and on. I need to watch my girlish figure! I eat the best food with no preservatives and it’s also chockful of vitamins. Believe it or not, I love my yummy meals, they taste good!
It’s the little things – This is what happiness is for me. I love nothing more than playing with the really cool stuffed teddies Dad got me or going for rides in the car with Mom. I really like family time when we watch movies and cuddle on the couch. Just being with my two favorite people in the world keeps me going. We spend quite a bit of time hanging out and I wouldn’t have it any other way!
I hope you found these tips helpful. It was fun spending time with all of you. Take care and give your parents a hug! They deserve it.
As I have frequently mentioned, I so enjoy having guest posts being sent to me.
They give you, dear reader, a break from yours truly and so very often they offer a new and interesting perspective on dogs, on us, and on the world.
This week there are three guest posts, in various guises, lined up and, who knows, there may be a couple more heading in.
But to the first of those guest posts.
Well, technically, more of a reposting today than a pure guest post. That reposting is of a most fascinating post published by Patrice Ayme on the 25th. January. It was called WE ARE MATHEMATICS. But there were parts of Patrice’s post that I struggled with so I am offering it to you with a rather long introduction.
I hope you enjoy it.
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Smack!
The sound of an object falling to the floor of the shower, suddenly and without warning, nearly caused me to jump out of my skin.
I was washing my hair and had my eyelids tightly closed lest the shampoo suds got into my eyes. Inadvertently, I had felt my right elbow dislodge something from the top of the small corner shelf that held the bar of soap and the bottle of hair shampoo.
I let the flowing warm shower water rinse the suds from my face, opened my eyes and looked down. The object that had made such a sudden, loud noise was a plastic brush maybe three or four inches long. It had fallen to the wet shower floor some five feet below the corner shelf where the brush normally lived.
As I stared down at the brush, the warm water cascading comfortably down my body, I reflected that in the space of a fraction of a second my mind had computed the distance that the unknown object had fallen and offered me a sense of the speed it must have been traveling when it hit the floor.
Now don’t get me wrong! I didn’t come up with a precise answer to that question of how fast the brush was going but in that moment of thought I sensed both the distance the brush had fallen, five feet; plus or minus, and the effect of gravity in accelerating that brush even over such a small distance. (Later I calculated the brush hit the shower base going at around 10 fps.)
Now it would have never occurred to me that my brain was capable of almost instantaneous calculations, as in mathematical calculations, if I hadn’t read in the previous twenty-four hours a recent essay from Patrice Ayme. An essay that convinced me completely that, in Patrice’s words:
The world is not as astonishingly understandable, as Einstein would have it. Neuronal grid cell studies show that we are the world. Understanding the world is understanding ourselves.
The world is not just written in mathematical language, as Galileo found out. We are made mathematically. We think mathematically, because we are made of math. We are mathematics.
Patrice had opened my eyes, more accurately opened my mind, to something that was then immediately clear to me and will be to you, dear reader: Our brains have an intuitive and instinctive sense of space. Not space in some abstract sense of the term but space in the sense of spatial awareness.
Think how easily, how quickly, you understand distance. Whether it is a measure of distance in your own home or assessing how far away that bird is flying towards and setting down on a high branch of a tall pine tree.
Think how even with our eyes closed we can navigate around a familiar part of our lives. Think how the sailors of ancient times (and trust me not so ancient times) used ‘Dead Reckoning’ (DR) to navigate safely and securely across vast oceans.
Our brains could only do this if they were computing these spatial assessments mathematically.
OK, that’s enough from me. Here’s that essay from Patrice.
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WE ARE MATHEMATICS
Mathematically Built Brain: The Example of Grid Cells, Incarnating Algebraic Geometry.
Understanding how the cognitive functions of the brain arise from its basic physiological components has been the final frontier in logic and rational science for thousands of years. (As I tried to explain yesterday, the superstitious religious fanatics tried their best to bury all of science, and the scientific mindset, the essence of humanity; they nearly succeeded!)
The 2014 Nobel was given to John O’Keefe (a “half”!), the rest jointly to May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser “for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain.” I will develop here the philosophical viewpoint, which is broader (O’Keefe’s career was steered by the influence of Hebb, the famous psychologist, who got the idea of the outside patterns imprinting the neurocircuitry of the brain).
Here is Hebb: “Let us assume that the persistence or repetition of a reverberatory activity (or “trace”) tends to induce lasting cellular changes that add to its stability.[…] When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite a cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A’s efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased.”
Well it turns out that evolution has had even more imagination than that. I will even propose Patrice’s Neural Theory, a vast generalization.
Galileo famously said the language of nature was written in mathematics. It turns out that it is much more than that. Our brain is mathematically organized. What Descartes consciously discovered, a coordinate frame in which to set-up calculus, is automatically generated in the brain. This is the meaning of grid cells.
Grid cells are neurons that fire when an animal moving of its own free will traverses a set of small regions (firing fields) which are roughly equal in size and arranged in a periodic triangular array that covers all of the available environment. They were discovered in 2005 by a couple (literally) of Norwegian researchers, the Mosers, and rewarded by the Nobel Prize in 2014 (shared with O’Keefe, from London, who invented the basic experimental technique, and discovered “place cells”)
Once set, navigation can be done in the dark, blinded. Scientists’ discovery that rodents, bats and nonhuman primates have a system in the brain for so-called “dead reckoning navigation”… “Dead reckoning” refers to the ability to navigate without external cues. The term comes from ship navigation. A crew will “take a sighting” via cues such as the stars or landmarks to determine where the ship is on a map. Then, when the ship moves, ‘dead reckons’ to update location on the map paying attention to speed and direction. The Greco-Romans already had such systems, with little paddled wheels counting the distance covered over the sea. It turns out that ‘dead reckoning’ is enabled by the grid cell system, inside the brain.
Recording Of Grid Cells Activity Inside Rat Brain (Jeffery Lab and others.)
“The importance of grid cells lies in the apparently minor detail that the patches of firing (called ‘firing fields’) produced by the cells are evenly spaced. That this makes a pretty pattern is nice, but not so important in itself – what is startling is that the cell somehow ‘knows’ how far (say) 30 cm is – it must do, or it wouldn’t be able to fire in correctly spaced places. This even spacing of firing fields is something that couldn’t possibly have arisen from building up a web of stimulus associations over the life of the animal, because 30 cm (or whatever) isn’t an intrinsic property of most environments, and therefore can’t come through the senses – it must come from inside the rat, through some distance-measuring capability such as counting footsteps, or measuring the speed with which the world flows past the senses. In other words, metric information is inherent in the brain, wired into the grid cells as it were, regardless of its prior experience. This was a surprising and dramatic discovery. Studies of other animals, including humans, have revealed place, head direction and grid cells in these species too, so this seems to be a general (and thus important) phenomenon and not just a strange quirk of the lab rat.”
We should have looked for Plato’s cave. It turned out that this cave has been built, is being built inside our heads all along! This cave is built-in two ways: automatically (grid cells) and as a response to the environment, by.us, from the outside, from the environment, in.
(So it matters what our brain experienced before to mold afterwards what comes in anew from the outside! No experience is a neutral experience!)
That cave is both a topology (what’s near and what’s not, the logic of place), and a basic geometry (the grid and its grid cells). To have a grid built automatically is the equivalent of having a reference frame in mathematics. It makes sense if one wants to make mathematics!
And not just mathematics, but even Infinitesimal Calculus! It is indeed clear that animals such as dogs have a mastery of calculus: experiences have shown this, and anybody with a dog throwing a stick sideways in water will see the dog running along the shore a bit, and then jump in the water, so as to minimize the time to reach the stick, a typical calculus problem. Dogs can do calculus, because they can make algebraic geometry in their brains, having a reference frame made of these grid cells! (If they had no grid cells, they would not be able to do calculus.)
Thus Descartes rediscovered, consciously, something which had been found, evolved and calculated by evolution half a billion years ago (or more!). The reference frame, also known now as the neuronal grid cell system, is basic to all of mechanics, even Poincare’-Lorentz Relativity. (An open question: Quantum Physics uses even more general reference systems, Hilbert spaces; I will therefore predict that the brain has also that sort of organization!)
The world is not as astonishingly understandable, as Einstein would have it. Neuronal grid cell studies show that we are the world. Understanding the world is understanding ourselves.
The world is not just written in mathematical language, as Galileo found out. We are made mathematically. We think mathematically, because we are made of math. We are mathematics.
We are not just looking at shadows in a cave, as Plato would have it. And the cave was not given to us by the gods, as Socrates had it. We are the cave, we, and our personal history, built it.
Any new experience, idea or emotion, taught or experienced, is another brick in that wall of perception and analysis, we better consider it carefully, before indulging in it. Call that the Principle of Mental Precaution But that Principle extends also to what we chose NOT to experience, which can be just as bad, if not worse.
You are not just what you think. You mentally are what you were submitted to, and what you decided to submit to. Fate is written in mathematical patterns, one theorem made out of neurons, their axons, dendrites and supporting glial cells, at a time.
Such theorems are written with the physics of minds, just as sturdy as the physics of stars. Just as hopeful, just as ominous.
Plato thought mathematics were “forms”, out there, outside of the physical world. This is not what science is finding. There are not “forms” out there, and physics, nature, somewhere else. Our minds are literally made of math.
So here is my theory:
“Whatever exists in mathematics exists in the brain. And reciprocally.”
Patrice Ayme’
ooOOoo
I do so hope that this essay from Patrice fires you up as it did me. If it leaves you with questions, then offer them to me as a comment to this post and I will take it upon myself to have Patrice answer them.
Finally, did you pick up on the fact that it isn’t just our human brains that are mathematical organs, it applies to the brains of dogs as well!
Mathematics in action. (Photo courtesy of Pinterest)
The recalled product includes:
Learning from Dogs 