Gestalt recognition and internal representation

a report from the philosophical laboratory

Olaf Breidbach

pp. 81-94

in: Armin Grünwald, Mathias Gutmann, Eva Neumann-Held (eds), On human nature, Berlin, Springer, 2002

Abstract

A real brain is built up by neurons which show highly stereotyped morphologies (Braitenberg and Schüz 1991). That means that in spite of the huge amount of contacts each neuron has, these were not chosen at random but were developed in a complex, but highly regular structure. Accordingly, there is no simple Gaussian distribution of functional connectivities as, for example, in the elements of spin glasses (Palm 1982). In the contrary a neuronal systems employs numerically complex, but topologically strictly ordered functional connections (Braitenberg 1977). Thus, in contrast to the algorithm used to describe classical neuronal networks, the brain activation patterns proceed on local connections. These are activated in parallel by any (internal or external) stimulus (Abeles, 1991).