3 - Neural perspectives of semantics: examples of seeing, acting, memorizing, meaningful understanding, feeling and thought

Summary

Stages of complexity development in the perception–action system

The first chapter concentrated on principles concerning the global schemata of brain architecture and dynamic neural units. The second exposed the basic characteristics of the perception–action system in the mammalian cortex. I introduced a radical extension of Fuster’s classical schema, complementing it by adding the organization components of language form perception together with structure-determined articulation action. This component also contains processing mechanisms that serve complex forms of higher order organization of formal meaning relations, intelligence, and creativity of art and so on. One usually assumes that these processes are located in Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas of the left hemisphere cortex. On the other hand concrete semantics and pragmatics may be distributed in almost any cortical area, locally or distributed, depending on the concrete meaning that the area or the area connection organizes.

In contrast to the previous chapters’ schematic accounts of basically automatic perception–action organization, the present chapter will discuss a number of experimental brain studies concerned with special mental functions that marked breakthroughs in our understanding of processes in the cognitive cortex.

I think that an explanation of the functional systems and neurobiological architectures is more transparent when we do not directly consider the complete complexity of the adult’s brain. Instead, we should study how the organization of competence develops in stages. Phenomenological observations of early phenomena and developmental stages of the brain’s maturation during childhood and adolescence will help our understanding of functions and cortical processes. Let me indicate a few characteristics.