How Brains Make Minds

Abstract

Brains make minds because mental representations and processes are performed by neural mechanisms. Mental representations work by patterns of firing in neural groups. More complicated representations that go beyond sensory experience can be formed by binding representations together, combining patterns of firing into new ones. In particular, binding can produce semantic pointers that coalesce and compress different kinds of information, including sensory, motor, emotional and verbal information. Semantic pointers retain connections to sensory and motor experience while also acquiring the autonomy that is usually attributed to symbols. Eliasmith’s semantic pointer hypothesis shows how neural cells can interact to produce high-level thinking. Different representations compete with each other to provide accounts of what is going on in the world through a parallel process of satisfaction of multiple constraints. Neural networks can learn by changing the synaptic connections between neurons.