Presented here is a novel graphical, structural, and functional model of the embodied mind. Despite strictly adhering to a physicalistic and reductionist approach, this model successfully resolves the apparent contradiction between the thesis regarding the causal closure of the physical realm and the widely held common-sense belief that the mental realm can influence physical behavior. Furthermore, it substantiates the theory of mind-brain identity while shedding light on its neural foundation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMulti-layer neural networks, mirror neurons, and gnostic neurons are concepts that assign neural representations to mental representations of percepts and inner sensations. However, none of these approaches alone can explain the higher mental functions, which we observe in natural minds from the third and first-person perspectives through introspection. Recent concepts of preservation of chemical traces of sensory stimuli and hierarchical structures of postsynaptic associations represented by specifically organized groups of neurons combine these concepts and effectively explain much more complex mental functions.
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