Advanced Models of Cortical Dynamics in Perception

Abstract

Here the phenomenon of interest is the flash of recognition and accompanying emotion one experiences when one receives a familiar stimulus. We explain the speed and richness of the event by postulating phase transitions in cortical neuropil: condensation from a gas-like phase to a liquid-like phase followed by evaporation. We model the process with a Carnot-like thermodynamic cycle at three successive levels of complexity: primary sensory cortices; limbic system; global neocortex. We replace the thermodynamic state variables of pressure, volume and temperature with neurodynamic variables, respectively mean beta-gamma power, pattern stability (negentropy), and neural feedback gain (mean interaction strength). We cite evidence that all sensory cortices use this cycle, necessarily so for two reasons. They all evolved from the primordial forebrain of vertebrates dominated by olfaction; they all transmit the same form of perceptual information, wave packets, so signals in all modalities armodel by linear matrix concatenation.

Selfhood triumvirate: From phenomenology to brain activity and back again

“…Despite these limitations, the results presented here are novel and provide a rich framework for new studies. The major strengths of the current study included (i) hypothesis-driven analysis that was derived from the neurophysiological triad model of Selfhood and examined how the functional connectivity within the three specific SRN OMs relates to three aspects of Selfhood, (ii) state-of-the-art EEG analysis that includes operational synchrony measure, that is specifically tuned to extract from the EEG the so-called operational modules that are the sets of synchronized operations produced by distant neuronal assemblies in the brain (Fingelkurts & Fingelkurts, 2001, 2015a; this is in agreement with the work of Freeman and Kozma (Freeman & Kozma, 2000;Kozma & Freeman, 2009;Freeman et al, 2015) regarding the emergent spatio-temporal activity patterns in the brain as windows on cognitive functions and consciousness, and (iii) adoption of the neurophenomenological design (Gallagher, 2003b;Lutz & Thompson, 2003;Fazelpour & Thompson, 2015) enabling us to integrate both a first-person phenomenological and a third-person neurophysiological perspectives within the same study framework.…”

“…In a nested hierarchy, higher levels are physically composed of lower levels (Feinberg, 2012). Indeed, every OM is a functional integration of several local brain fields (registered by the correspondent EEG electrodes), which in their turn are the integration of yet smaller local fields of transient functional neuronal assemblies (Fingelkurts & Fingelkurts, 2001Fingelkurts et al, 2019; see also Freeman & Kozma, 2000;Kozma & Freeman, 2009;Freeman et al, 2015). All three OMs, together, form a higher level of a functional nested architecture -the self-referential network (marked as a dashed circle line that connects three OMs).…”

“…The temporal coupling (synchronization) of such segments among several local EEG recordings then, reflects the synchronization of operations (i.e. operational synchrony) produced by different neuronal assemblies (located in different cortical regions) into the integrated and unified patterns responsible for complex mental operations (Fingelkurts & Fingelkurts, 2001;Fingelkurts et al, 2010Fingelkurts et al, , 2013 see also Freeman & Kozma, 2000;Kozma & Freeman, 2009;Freeman et al, 2015). 3 In the current study (as well as in our previous studies on the triad model) we used a set of brain areas that have been established previously to belong to SRN (Fingelkurts & Fingelkurts, 2011).…”