Author: Freeman WJ1.
Affiliation: 1Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-3206, USA. Electronic address: dfreeman@berkeley.edu.
Conference/Journal: Curr Opin Neurobiol.
Date published: 2014 Dec 12
Other:
Volume ID: 31C , Pages: 199-205 , Special Notes: doi: 10.1016/j.conb.2014.11.008 , Word Count: 126
What distinguishes animals from robots is the neurodynamics of intention. The mechanism is the action-perception cycle that creates and applies knowledge. Knowledge is the condensed, categorized information brains accumulate over lifetimes of experience. Vertebrate intention emerged in the Ordovician period as a tool to prowl first olfactory environments, then environments of other modalities. Action necessitates remembering space-time trajectories. Hence the sensory, motor, and hippocampal cortices interact intimately. Brains create the contextual richness of relevant knowledge almost instantly by exploiting the capacity of cortical neuropil to transit between a gas-like phase with sparse, random firing and a liquid-liked phase of high-energy, narrow band oscillation synchronized widely. They express remembrances in spatial patterns of amplitude modulation (AM) of beta and gamma waves.
Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
PMID: 25506772