Out of the Cave by Mark L. Johnson

Author:Mark L. Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mind; Knowledge; Embodied Cognition; Meaning; Concepts; Abstract Thought; Neural Networks; Motive Controls; Epistemic Values; Emotions; Feelings;
Publisher: MIT Press

7.4 Interpreting the Mind’s Connectional Architecture: How Expectations Shape Perception

One of the central hypotheses of this book is that the brain architecture we describe as different levels of neural structure and organization constitutes the basic architecture of mind. This may not be obvious now, but in chapters 9–11 we explain how these four types of cortical structures make abstraction possible and create our concepts. Here, in this present chapter, we get a glimpse of how neural connectivity implies conceptual organization. First, we see there are four levels in the neural organization of mind, each of which is mostly coherent with itself (through the level-specific interpathway connections). There are indeed specific modules for both the primary sensory cortices and motor cortex, with unique input-output relations to sensation and action. These interface with the rest of the brain through the secondary (unidmodal) association cortices, which provide more conceptual rather than sensory or motor transduction functions. In vision, for example, where the primary cortex performs low-level organization of lines and receptive fields, the secondary association cortices begin to provide more meaningful representations of motion, spatial patterns, and the objects of perception.

These more integrated representations are then restricted to heteromodal association cortices, particularly the limbic cortices. The heteromodal association areas are important integration or convergence zones (Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio 1990) in both the posterior brain (parietal and temporal perceptual cortices) and the anterior brain (the motor evaluation and planning cortices). The limbic areas are the most densely interconnected across regions, implying that—with their visceral evaluative and motive functions—these networks must form the integrative core of the mind, not only interfacing concepts with bodily needs, but also organizing even the more abstract conceptual operations as a function of personal values and motives.

This last interpretation is a somewhat paradoxical implication of the brain’s connectional architecture. We tend to think of the visceral level as concrete and simple, not as integrative and abstract. If something makes you disgusted, for example, this is not an abstract experience: you just want to throw up. Yet, the dense interconnections among the limbic networks at the core of the brain, compared to the greater isolation and modularity of the sensory and motor cortices, imply that our visceral feelings actually form the integrative base of experience. We form even complex intellectual evaluations with a base at the gut level. Because this integrative level is where our basic values operate and where emotions come into play, we can begin to understand the implications of this cortical connectional anatomy for the emotional component of abstract concepts.

Another principle comes from studying the connections that link the visceral limbic base to heteromodal association, secondary association, and primary sensory and motor cortices. The bidirectional information flow (limbic toward external world and external world toward limbic) is an important feature of cortical architecture. This bidirectional pattern is surprising if we assume only that perceptual data comes into the cortex and motor data goes out again. Instead, neural processing is bidirectional for both perception and action. We reach out with our expectancies in order to see.

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