New review! Cognition is an emergent property doi.org/10.1016/j.cobe… Electrical fields in the brain can serve as a medium for propagating activity nearly instantaneously. They can organize computations through subspace coding. @MIT_Picower @mitbrainandcog #neuroscience
@MillerLabMIT @MIT_Picower @mitbrainandcog 4) But sometimes these electric fields are independent. We need to understand why and when we get interaction/emergence and when we get independence/modularity.
@MillerLabMIT @MIT_Picower @mitbrainandcog Emergence is official language for handwaving, there is nothing in the universe that cannot be explained by its component parts, to claim otherwise is to slap "emergent property" on something to avoid trying to figure out the actual explanation.
@MillerLabMIT @MIT_Picower @mitbrainandcog Might this lead to a place where action-perception coordination looks a bit like partially controlled turbulent transport?
@MillerLabMIT @MIT_Picower @mitbrainandcog 1) Great & important article, Earl! But let me point out the flip side of this. While such electric fields may, under certain circumstances, influence neurons, different electric fields can sum additively, reflecting transient modularity or independence of neuronal populations...
@MillerLabMIT @MIT_Picower @mitbrainandcog 3) In other words, sometimes neuronal populations interact due to spatially overlapping electric fields, leading to emergent properties, as you point out...
@MillerLabMIT @MIT_Picower @mitbrainandcog 5) Example of additive ERPs from review linked in previous post. Plot of Repetition & Relatedness main effects and Repetition X Relatedness interaction effect across electrode sites (posterior to anterior on x-axis). Note zero interaction effect, i.e., additive electric fields.
@MillerLabMIT @MIT_Picower @mitbrainandcog 2) This is well-known to ERP researchers who have long understood that additive effects on ERP amplitude in a factorial experimental design reveal such independent processing (see attached review article). drive.google.com/file/d/1OBgNJf…