“By analogy, Nature’s most economical usage of the brain would be for a reasonable proportion of it to be in operation at any one time, rather than having one concept, one neuron.” Instead, each neuron would occur in a great many distinct c…the two surfaces of the disk that represents the cortex. Many other decisions would have to be made concerning the design, even before any really useful experiments could be performed. These decisions would concern qualitative details of st…Sometimes Penfield’s theory is considered to be inconsistent with Hebb’s, but in the present writer’s opinion, the assembly theory is made easier to accept by combining it with this hypothesis of a central control. For the following mechani…
Wilder Penfield
scientist · 3 mentions across 1 reading
In this course
Penfield's cortical mapping work and neurophysiological research on localized brain function provided the foundational empirical groundwork for mid-century theories of how neural circuits encode memory and perception. The course readings invoke his experimental methods and concepts of neural assembly to support arguments about distributed computation and central control mechanisms in the brain, positioning Penfield as a crucial bridge between experimental neurosurgery and emergent cybernetic theories of information processing. His investigation of consciousness and mental processes through direct neural stimulation anticipates contemporary questions about whether subjective experience can be fully mapped onto physical brain architecture.
Background
Wilder Graves Penfield was an American-Canadian neurosurgeon. He expanded brain surgery's methods and techniques, including mapping the functions of various regions of the brain such as the cortical homunculus. His scientific contributions on neural stimulation expand across a variety of topics including hallucinations, illusions, dissociation and déjà vu. Penfield devoted much of his thinking to mental processes, including contemplation of whether there was any scientific basis for the existence of the human soul.
Wikipedia →Mentioned in 1 reading
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