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Life and Understanding: The Origins of "Understanding" in Self-Organizing Nervous Systems
1Virtual Structures Research, Inc. Potomac, MD, USA.
Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience
|December 27, 2016
Summary
Markov blankets, essential for life, may also underpin nervous system intelligence. These structures enable organisms to progress from sensing to understanding their environment through neuronal packet formation and mental modeling.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience and computational biology
- Investigating the role of Markov blankets in biological systems and intelligence.
- Exploring the emergence of life and cognitive functions through self-organization.
Background:
- Life's emergence is linked to self-organizing systems with bounded subsets maintaining statistical independence.
- Markov blankets are hypothesized to form in neuronal networks, creating bounded neuronal assemblies or 'packets'.
- These packets build upon neuronal assemblies, providing stable structures that resist entropic erosion.
Approach:
- Examines the hypothesis that Markov blankets operate within the nervous system.
- Investigates how neuronal packets, formed by Markov blankets, contribute to perception and understanding.
- Connects neuronal packet dynamics to the representation and manipulation of mental models.
Key Points:
- Neuronal packets give rise to object perception and the apprehension of behavior.
- Understanding involves manipulating mental models constituted by neuronal packets, capturing object relationships.
- Coordination of population vectors within neuronal packets is associated with advanced cognitive abilities and prediction.
Conclusions:
- Markov blankets, crucial for life's emergence, are exploited by evolution to ground adaptation and understanding.
- The neuronal packet hypothesis provides a framework for understanding the progression from sensing to comprehension.
- This framework highlights a mechanism for prediction and behavioral optimization unique to higher species.
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