Reverberating Circuits

Neurons use their activation if they fire.

Consequently, they cannot remain active by themselves.

Concepts can remain active for at least several seconds.

They can do this by being represented by a host of neurons, a reverberating circuit of neurons which activate each other.

It's not unlike the Game of Life. The big matrix of cells is initially empty. A few cells are activated. Cells spread their activation until many of the cells are activated, blinking on and off.

In the game of life, the spread of activation is done by simply breeding rules. In CAs the spread of activation is due to axonal connections.

There is some neuropsycholgical evidence for the existence of CAs.

Unfortunately, imaging techniques don't work well for measuring activation of large number of individual neurons in behaving brains. We can not actually see CAs working.

Consequently, computational modelling may be the best tool we have to understand CAs.