The Endogenously Active Brain: The Need for an Alternative Cognitive Architecture

Most proposals of cognitive architectures in cognitive science and accounts of brain processes in neuroscience construe the mind/brain as reactive: processing is initiated by a stimulus and terminates in a response to it. But there is growing evidence that brains are endogenously active: oscillation...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: William Bechtel
Format: Article
Language:deu
Published: Éditions Kimé 2013-05-01
Series:Philosophia Scientiæ
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/philosophiascientiae/846
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Summary:Most proposals of cognitive architectures in cognitive science and accounts of brain processes in neuroscience construe the mind/brain as reactive: processing is initiated by a stimulus and terminates in a response to it. But there is growing evidence that brains are endogenously active: oscillations in electrochemical activity at multiple frequencies are ongoing in the brain even in the absence of stimuli and stimuli serve to modulate these oscillations rather than initiate activity. Moreover, evidence is growing that this endogenous activity is used in various information processing activities. I appeal to evidence from single-cell recording, EEG, and resting state fMRI to support the claim of ongoing oscillatory behavior in the brain and identify several ways it may contribute to cognition. If cognitive science is to understand how we perform cognitive tasks it needs to develop cognitive architectures that incorporate the sort of endogenous dynamic activity exhibited by the brain.
ISSN:1281-2463
1775-4283