Re: Dolphins, SIs & Mind Morality [was: Sleep, Memory, SIs etc.]

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
01 Nov 1999 15:26:01 +0100

"Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@www.aeiveos.com> writes:

> > Does an individual dolphin have a different "personality" depending on which
> > part of its brain is awake?
>
> Probably depends on whether they have left-side/right-side specialization
> like we do. Since both the left side & right side have the same
> requirements for survival I would bet you don't get side-to-side
> specialization as we have. It would be interesting to know if a dolphin
> has other physiological assymetries, i.e. is the heart on one side and
> the liver on the other or are they all perfectly "inline"?

As far as I know they are assymetric like other mammals. I don't have any info on brain lateralisation, but it might be known in the comparative neurophysiological literature. I seem to recall that monkeys have lateralisation, and it is not unreasonable to expect in "high level" areas that are not strictly connected to a symmetric outside world (lateralisation is to some extent a kind of symmetry breaking in the brain which saves space).

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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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