The Cooperative Neuron

Abstract

Abstract The Cooperative Neuron roots our understanding of mental life, as consciously experienced and as studied by psychologists, in recent discoveries in cellular neurophysiology, which show that many neurons in the mammalian neocortex have capabilities that transcend those assumed by twentieth-century psychology and systems neuroscience. These neurons receive information from many other parts of the brain and amplify their information transmission when appropriate in that context. Amplification is defined and quantified using recent advances in information theory by which the contributions of different inputs to information transmission can be distinguished. This context-sensitive cooperative style of Big Data processing produces widespread coherence from operations that are localized within each of a multitude of local neuronal processors. This book shows how this provides cellular foundations for contextual disambiguation in perception, selective attention, working memory and imagery, emotional prioritization, cognitive control, and learning, which has profound implications for neurobiology, psychology, neurology, psychiatry, and philosophy. The book is written for a wide audience, and it explains the neuroscience to the psychologists, the psychology to the neuroscientists, and both fields to philosophers, to students of the behavioural and brain sciences, and to all intrigued by the enduring mystery of how brains can be minds. Finally, it identifies many issues inviting exploration.