Neuronal models for cognitive processes

Strategic Challenge of Polysensorial Knowledge: bringing the "elephant" into "focus" (Part #3)

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]

---

In response to an early version of the above table, Robert Daoust (personal communication) points to the work of Arnold Trehub (Neuronal Models for Cognitive Processes: networks for learning, perception and imagination, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 1977; The Cognitive Brain, 1991). This focuses on neuronal mechanisms he names the Retinoid Model. In a subsequent paper (Space, Self, and the Theater of Consciousness, Consciousness and Cognition, 2007), Trehub argues that:

This hypothesized brain system has structural and dynamic properties enabling it to register and appropriately integrate disparate foveal stimuli into a perspectival, egocentric representation of an extended 3D world scene including a neuronally tokened locus of the self which, in this theory, is the neuronal origin of retinoid space. As an integral part of the larger neuro-cognitive model, the retinoid system is able to perform many other useful perceptual and higher cognitive functions. In this paper, I draw on the hypothesized properties of this system to argue that neuronal activity within the retinoid structure constitutes the phenomenal content of consciousness and the unique sense of self that each of us experiences.

Daoust however argues that what Trehub calls "retinoid system" may well be found in an analogous form for the other senses, namely (as he suggests) as an "olfactoroid system", an "auditoroid system", etc -- whereby humans obtain their egocentric understanding of the world. Daoust suggests that the merit of Trehub's approach -- in enabling any more comprehensive understanding of the "elephant" -- lies in the role played by internal cerebral structures in the process of perception. With regard to Interaction between analogical and symbol/token representations and The theater of consciousness, Trehub states:

On metaphorical grounds, I do not think it stretches matters much to think of specialized neuronal mechanisms such as synaptic matrices, semantic, and affective/hedonic circuits (see Trehub, 1991, pp. 153-168) which categorize/evaluate the cellular activity presented on the retinoid "stage" of C3 as something like a critical observing audience.

Elsewhere Trehub, through a review (Review of Revonsuo's Inner Presence), relates his own framwork to a recent summary of research on the matter by Antti Revonsuo (Inner Presence: consciousness as a biological phenomenon, 2006).

Within the context of an exploration of the process of eliciting "collective intelligence" (Mark Tovey (Ed.), Collective Intelligence: creating a prosperous world at peace, 2008), such intelligence has been understood in terms of "collective sense-making" through the "development of collective sensing organs" as highlighted by George Pór (Cultivating Collective Intelligence: a core leadership competence in a complex world, 2008), citing various authors (although emphasizing the sense of seeing and dialogue):

The neural networks in living systems, biological or social, are not the source but vital enablers of CI. 'The nervous system of the global super-organism has a potential to enable the emergence of a collective intelligence, the same way as organic nervous systems enable the emergence of intelligence in living systems.'.... 'Collective sensing mechanisms use the power of shared seeing and dialogue to tap an unused resource of collective sense-making and thinking together.' Some questions worth asking are: How can groups and organizations upgrade such collective sensing organs as their knowledge networks and self-organizing knowledge ecosystems? How to improve the organizational functions supporting and being supported by them? (p. 241)

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]