![]() Edelman's writing integrates perceptual categorization, memory, and learning with “qualia.” The latter, Edelman states, “constitute the collection of personal or subjective experiences, feelings and sensations that accompany awareness.” 1 He appreciates and describes the interaction of the unconscious on the conscious mind and gives an accounting of the development of “concept” thinking. The formatting of concepts is a product of the brain categorizing its own activities via memory processes and perceptions both internal and external. This connection is, perhaps, a link between emotional centers and brain centers or higher thought processes and the capacity to form concepts. For example, the frontal cortices with their connection with the limbic system, including the hippocampus, establish relations with emotional areas of the brain. Global mapping activities in the cortices of the brain in conjunction with lower brain centers represent a mapping of various types of maps. ![]() Reentry involves bidirectional, reciprocal signaling between map regions of the brain which mutually influence each other across multiple parallel paths whose information is not pre-specified. A process of “reentry” correlates that synchronization of the activity neural groups in different maps. ![]() However, the groups of neurons themselves are anatomically related to various anatomical areas of the brain and are disposed into maps in the brain that connect and overlap. Changes occur between groups that are functional rather than anatomical. As a result neurons in a group are more closely connected with each other than neurons in other groups.” 2 Additionally, in coordination with behavioral experience, a process of synaptic selection occurs within the repertoire of groups. Neurons that fire together wire together. Then, these neurons strengthen or weaken their connections according to their individual pattern of electrical activity. This branching generates extensive variability in the connection patterns of an individual, which creates an immense, diverse repertoire of neural circuits. Edelman says, “Neurons extend the branching processes in many directions. From early on in life, it is epigenetic as well. Edelman argues that the development of individuals is constrained by genes and inheritance. In its most developed form, this means the evolutionary acquisition of the capability for language.” 1 When considering Edelman's cohesive hypothesis of the development of the CNS leading to functional brain mappings and higher order, dynamic global mappings seems plausible. Edelman states that the path to human consciousness lies in the development of symbols and their associated meanings, “by the evolution of new forms of symbolic memory and neurosystems serving social communication and transmission. According to Edelman, it was Darwin who first recognized that natural selection had to account for the emergence of human consciousness by way of morphologic evolution. Edelman dedicated his book, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, to the memory of Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud. Quotations from the below-selected authors will be discussed as they bear on consciousness and thinking.Įdelman. I would like to state that I am definitely not attempting to assess the breadth and scope of respective researchers' findings and hypotheses. To this end, I will focus on the conclusions of prominent researchers in clarifying the connections between central nervous system (CNS) activity and conscious thought. Assessment and feedback from diverse sources will serve to enrich the common endeavor to understand the determinants of human thinking and behavior. Those of us who have a professional interest in neuroscience should, I believe, properly judge and critically evaluate the opinions and hypotheses of researchers. I do not believe it necessary to be highly specialized in order to judge the work and opinions of researchers. Research protocols, after all, are dedicated to keep bias at the lowest possible level but are not entirely eliminated. Furthermore, tenets and premises are frequently derived from shared sources of inspiration. Even if the researchers disagree to a considerable extent, they tend to be of similar orientation and bias. Most of the investigators who labor in their respective fields only seldom critique work outside their area of expertise. ![]() Neuroscience embraces different and usually separate fields of investigation. Neuroscience: Selected Hypothesis and Conclusions
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