Brain Structure

Overview

Norns' brains are divided into seven lobes. These are groups of Neurons with similar properties. Each lobe connects to the outside world via sensory organs or motor organs (muscles, etc.), or makes connections to one or more other brain lobes.

• Perception Lobe (00)
  
  
• Sensory Lobes
• Drive Lobe (01)
• Stimulus Source Lobe (02)
•  Verb Lobe (03)
•  Noun Lobe (04)
•  General Sensory Lobe (05)

• Decision Lobe (06)
  
  
• Attention Lobe (07)
  
  
• Concept Space (08)
  

Sensory Lobes

These five lobes receive data from the creature's senses, such as vision, hearing and touch.
Certain kinds of data go to certain sensory lobes, (drive, verb and noun lobes)
where they become involved in specialized brain activity.

The Drive Lobe receives information from the creatures biochemistry (the drive chemicals)

The Verb and Noun lobes deal with the information in the words spoken by the user.

The Stimulus Source Lobe takes note of which object is the source of the stimulation acting upon the norn.
For example if a grendel slaps the norn, the source of the "slap" stimulus is the grendel. Information about the source of a sound or movement goes to a lobes concerned with directing the creature's Attention.

As its name suggests, the General Sensory lobe is the primary device for sorting sensory data. 

Much of this low-level activity is 'subconscious,' however, much of the data is also collated and sent to the large General Sensory Lobe feeding Concept Space where a creature's main perceptive and memory mechanisms reside.

Concept Space (lobe 08)

By far the largest region of a norn's brain is used to store memories of the events that occur over its lifetime.

This region is called Concept Space, and seems to be involved in the collation and organization of a norn's perceptions and experiences. We know that the neurons in this region are very mobile, and are constantly reconnecting themselves to the main sensory lobe in response to new experiences.

Artificial stimulation of these neurons can trigger outward behavior, but it is not certain what the relationship is between a given neuron and the behavior it produces.

Decision Layer (lobe 06)

This small region of highly dendritic (many input fibers) neurons receives impulses from Concept Space and seems to be implicated in the forming of decisions about a course of action.

Sufficient stimulation of a given decision neuron always invokes a single action, for example one decision cell seems to control a creature's desire to approach the object he is attentive to.

Attention Layer (Lobe 07)

This lobe controls the creature's attention, and is fairly straightforward.

Signals enter this region whenever a nearby object makes a sound, or is seen to move, and the object which makes the most fuss over a period of time is likely to be the one which the creature focuses on.

This lobe also seems to be involved in goal-directed behavior, such as the seeking out of food when hungry, however this mechanism is not well understood.

Dendrites & Neurones

The Norn brain consists of a number of brain lobes made up of connecting together with dendrites. The lobes are each a grid of squares, where each square on the grid is a neuron. Neurons are basically placeholders - they store information that the game engine then interprets.

Dendrites link neurons in different brain lobes together, carrying information between them in one way only.
Some dendrites are static for the entire Norn's life. Other dendrites are motile, although they always connect between the same two lobes. 

These movable dendrites have connections that can be strengthened or weakened, and when a dendrite connection becomes very weak, the dendrite wanders off and reconnects elsewhere. Therefore, this can be used to store memories of important and not so important events in the Norn's life. 

Three Parts