I think that brain cells create a theatre of the mind because they have
“taken on” specific external properties. I assume that they take on
experiential qualities because they have become highly correlated with the
actual experience. For example, I believe that activity in visual cortex allows
the creation of vibrant and captivating internal imagery simply because
activity here has become correlated with the appearance of this imagery in the
environment. Like the neurons responsible for the sensations in a phantom limb,
early visual neurons “hold” the experiential properties of experiences that
they have been correlated with in the past. But imagery is held throughout the
cortex, in association areas as well as sensory areas, because each part of the
brain has become correlated with some type of environmentally induced
experience. Surely anterior association areas have been similarly correlated
with experiences, albeit more highly abstract ones. The firing of neurons is
not just correlated with sensory experience, it practically IS sensory experience.
When you imagine something, you experience it again, you fire the same neurons
that fire when it is experienced in the environment. At first it is hard to
appreciate that what feels like a novel thought is actually a de novo
conglomeration of many memory fragments from the past. Our brains do a
fantastic job of mixing preexisting microrepresentations from a variety of different
previous experiences into fantastic composites of never-before-seen imagery and
sensations.
Read the full article that I wrote on this topic here:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938416308289
Read the full article that I wrote on this topic here:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938416308289
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