Visualizing the Creatures 1 Brain
The science side of Creatures is vast and amazing, complete with plenty of poking and prodding! Luckily for our Norns, the only thing that they actually notice is if the syringe is used. All of the other tools are nonintrusive, although they certainly leave no room for Norn privacy! One of the most complex parts of the Creatures series is the brain. I recently started to take a look at some of these concepts, and it dawned on me that I have no idea what the brain actually looks like. There are different lobes, but just what do they look like? Each one differs in size and position, too, and just looking at some coordinates really doesn’t paint the whole picture. So I decided to make just about the simplest diagram of the Creatures 1 brain structure I could. Caution: Nothing fancy or particularly pretty about this one!
Studying the Creatures brain is something I still hesitate to get into because there really isn’t an “easy” starting point. So although I admit that this diagram is nothing special, sometimes that’s the best place to begin! Note that this has nothing to do with how lobes interact: Those positioned right next to each other don’t necessarily link up directly. This is more of a visual to show how the lobes differ in size, particularly related to how massive the concept lobe (9) is! Each lobe is outlined, and the square in each corner represents the size of a single neuron.
| # | Lobe | # | Lobe | # | Lobe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Perception | 4 | Verb | 7 | Decision |
| 2 | Drive | 5 | Noun | 8 | Attention |
| 3 | Source | 6 | General Sense | 9 | Concept |
The biggest takeaway from this diagram is the sheer size of the concept lobe (9)! It has more neurons than all of the other lobes combined together, but size isn’t everything. Even the smallest lobes serve vital purposes. We’ll go into a lesson on definitions in the future, but in summary: Each lobe contains a set number of neurons. Each neuron corresponds with a very specific something. Lobes can be connected together, and this happens when neurons from different lobes are connected via paths created by dendrites. Have I lost you yet? The terminology may sound like a lot, but expect to see some other basic diagrams that will illustrate just what these ideas mean! This stuff isn’t the easiest, yet it is really fascinating to see how a Norn thinks. Hopefully this is remotely useful to those dabbling with Creatures brains!
A very cool intro. Would definitely like to see more of this.
Can’t help but feel a little sorry for the Norns looking at their tiny little decision lobe. It explains a lot though…
Nice to hear from you, Arch!
I can’t believe it took me a month to post the followup to the first post… So much to do. Ha ha! The decision lobe does look like a pretty pitiful part of the brain compared to the rest. I’m still doing plenty of research, but my understanding is that it contains 16 available decisions. The other lobes (particularly the concept lobe) help determine which decision is made in a winner-takes-all scenario. But I’m getting ahead of myself, and might not even have that exactly correct! I hope to continue this series of posts pretty regularly. Even if everyone has to suffer through some rather boring and simple diagrams, I promise that they serve a purpose and will lead to some more interesting things in the end!
This was a very good starting point! I hope to see more!
Thank you! I’m glad this is quite useful, even though I was afraid it was going to seem way too simple. Yet I think this is where I needed to start so I could understand, and I’m glad it works for others, too!