THINK ABOUT IT –

Jan. 19, 2023 – According to Pessoa, among the brain’s most astounding properties is its “massive combinatorial connectivity.” Like in any well-connected community where rumors spread nimbly among its members, the brain’s highly structured anatomical entanglement allows signals to travel between neurons in countless combinations, even across parts of the brain that are not directly linked. This “global accessibility” makes our brains highly efficient. A richly connected brain begets a particular way of thinking about it: more in terms of circuits and networks, less in terms of isolated regions; more in terms of a collection of interacting systems, less in terms of boxes and arrows. “The network itself is the unit,” writes Pessoa, “not the brain area.” For instance, instead of referring to attention as being located in the parietal cortex, Pessoa considers attention as something that emerges from the activity of multiple networks of brain regions (frontal cortex, parietal cortex, temporal cortex).

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