This is the first book to use complexity theory to open up the 'geophilosophy' developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, Anti-Oedipus and What is Philosophy?.

The cell assembly is an important concept for cognitive psychology. Cognitive processing will to a large extent depend on the relations that can exist between different assemblies. A potential relation between assemblies can already be seen in the occurrence of (classical) conditioning. However, the resulting associations between assemblies only produce behavioristic processing or so-called regular computation. Higher-level cognitive abilities most likely result from nonregular computation. I discuss the possibility of this form of computation in terms of cell assemblies.

The cell assembly as a simple attractor cannot explain many cognitive phenomena. It must be a highly structured network that can sustain highly structured excitation patterns. Moreover, a cell assembly must be more widely distributed in space than on a square millimeter.

Further tests of Amit's model are indicated. One strategy is to use the apparent coding sparseness of the model to make predictions about coding sparseness in Miyashita's network. A second approach is to use memory overload to induce false positive responses in modules and biological systems. In closing, the importance of temporal coding and timing requirements in developing biologically plausible attractor networks is mentioned.

Evidence suggests that humans might have neurological specializations for music processing, but a compelling adaptationist account of music and dance is lacking. The sexual selection hypothesis cannot easily account for the widespread performance of music and dance in groups (especially synchronized performances), and the social bonding hypothesis has severe theoretical difficulties. Humans are unique among the primates in their ability to form cooperative alliances between groups in the absence of consanguineal ties. We propose that this unique form of social organization (...) is predicated on music and dance. Music and dance may have evolved as a coalition signaling system that could, among other things, credibly communicate coalition quality, thus permitting meaningful cooperative relationships between groups. This capability may have evolved from coordinated territorial defense signals that are common in many social species, including chimpanzees. We present a study in which manipulation of music synchrony significantly altered subjects’ perceptions of music quality, and in which subjects’ perceptions of music quality were correlated with their perceptions of coalition quality, supporting our hypothesis. Our hypothesis also has implications for the evolution of psychological mechanisms underlying cultural production in other domains such as food preparation, clothing and body decoration, storytelling and ritual, and tools and other artifacts. (shrink)

Experiments with remote perception and Random Event Generators (REG) performed over the last decades show small but significant anomalous effects. Since these effects seem to be independent of spatial and temporal distance, they appear to be in disagreement with the standard scientific worldview. A very simple explanation of quantum mechanics is pre- sented, rejecting all unjustified claims about the world. A view of mind in agreement with cognitive neuroscience is introduced. It is argued that mind and consciousness are emer- gent (...) properties of the brain and are understandable without any nonphysical assumptions. A plausible explanation of the results of anomalous experiments, based on the concept of synchronicity, introduced by C.G. Jung and advocated by W. Pauli, is offered. A proof is given that strong correlations should exist between any systems that once interacted. Synchronicity events between parts of the brain and physical objects may be sufficient to explain the results of anomalous experiments. Standard physics is sufficient to understand these phenomena. Motto. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine how increasing understanding and explicit awareness of social consciousness can develop through transformations in worldview. Based on a model that emerged from a series of qualitative and quantitative studies on worldview transformation, we identify five developmental levels of social consciousness: embedded, self-reflexive, engaged, collaborative, and resonant. As a person's worldview transforms, awareness can expand to include each of these levels, leading to enhanced prosocial experiences and behaviours. Increased social consciousness can in turn stimulate further transformations (...) in worldview. We then consider an educational curriculum to facilitate the understanding of worldview and the cultivation of social consciousness as core capacities for twenty-first century students and global citizens. (shrink)

In Flourish, the positive psychologist Martin Seligman (2011) identifies five commonly recognized factors that are characteristic of human flourishing or wellbeing: (1) “positive emotion,” (2) “relationships,” (3) “engagement,” (4) “achievement,” and (5) “meaning” (p. 24). Although there is no settled set of necessary and sufficient conditions neatly circumscribing the bounds of human flourishing (Seligman, 2011), we would mostly likely consider a person that possessed high levels of these five factors as paradigmatic or prototypical of human flourishing. Accordingly, if we wanted (...) to go about the practical task of actually increasing our level of wellbeing, we ought to do so by focusing on practically increasing the levels of the five factors that are characteristic of wellbeing. If, for instance, an activity such as musical engagement can be shown to positively influence each or all of these five factors, this would be compelling evidence that an activity such as musical engagement can positively contribute to one’s living a flourishing life. I’m of the belief that psychological research can and should be used, not only to identify and diagnose maladaptive psychological states, but identify and promote adaptive psychological states as well. In this article I advance the hypothesis and provide supporting evidence for the claim that musical engagement can positively contribute to one’s living a flourishing life. Since there has not yet been a substantive and up-to-date investigation of the possible role of music in contributing to one’s living a flourishing life, the purpose of this article is to conduct this investigation, thereby bridging the gap and stimulating discussion between the psychology of music and the psychology of wellbeing. (shrink)

MICHAEL WHEELER Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005432 pages, ISBN: 0262232405 (hbk); $35.001.When I was teaching at MIT in the 1960s, students from the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory would come to...

The recently celebrated division into ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ problems of consciousness is unfortunate and misleading. Built on functionalist grounds, it carves up the subject matter by declaring that the most elusive parts need a fundamentally and intrinsically different solution. What we have, rather, are ‘difficult’ problems of conscious experience, but problems that are not difficult per se. Their difficulty is relative, among other things, to the kind of solution one is looking for and the tools used to accomplish the task. (...) I argue that the study of conscious experience in our scientific and philosophical tradition is a very difficult problem because it has been addressed with inappropriate tools: with harmful long-lasting and inadequate dogmas that have dogged science for centuries. I describe five of these dogmas, which are: the existence of an objective reality independent of human understanding; the subordination of epistemology to ontology; the restricted view of the objectivist-subjectivist dichotomy; the exclusion of the body from the study of the mind; and the idea of explaining the mind in terms of the neurophysiological processes of individual brains. I claim that conscious experience is not a transcendental, paranatural, mystic or magic phenomenon. It is tractable and approachable with scientific methods. However, one must look not only for non-reductionist views to approach it, but also for views that avoid the dogmas here described. Conscious experience is a living phenomenon and it has to be understood as such. Accordingly, our understanding of it has to make sense at several levels, from evolution to morphophysiology, from neuroanatomy to language. I put forward an approach to conscious experience which is free of the dogmas that make the study of conscious experience so difficult. This view, called ecological naturalism, is a non-functionalist and non-reductive view that provides an naturalistic account of the mind. It also puts special emphasis on irreducible supra-individual biological processes that are essential in the realization of mental phenomena and therefore conscious experience. (shrink)

I have two goals in this paper. First, I want to show by example that inferences about theoretical entities are relatively contingent affairs. Previously accepted conceptual metaphors in science set both the general form of new theories and our acceptance of the theories as plausible. In addition, they determine how we define the relevant parameters in investigating phenomena in the first place. These items then determine how we conceptualize things in the world. Second, and maybe more importantly, I want to (...) solve a puzzle that falls out of our current explication of attention, namely why we have it. Given the now widely accepted view that our brains are massively parallel, it is difficult to see why we should have evolved attentional mechanisms at all. Why gate when we can already process what we transduce in parallel? Here I answer that puzzle and suggest a perspective on attention that makes it a bit easier to understand, although this perspective also entails that we have to revise how we individuate experimental protocols and relevant data. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary efforts from developmental psychology, phenomenology, and philosophy of mind, have studied the rudiments of social cognition and conceptualized distinct forms of intersubjective communication and interaction at human early life.Interaction theoristsconsiderprimary intersubjectivitya non-mentalist, pre-theoretical, non-conceptual sort of processes that ground a certain level of communication and understanding, and provide support to higher-level cognitive skills. We argue the study of human/neurorobot interaction consists in a unique opportunity to deepen understanding of underlying mechanisms in social cognition through synthetic modeling, while allowing to (...) examine a second person experiential (2PP) access to intersubjectivity in embodied dyadic interaction. Concretely, we propose the study of primary intersubjectivity as a 2PP experience characterized by predictive engagement, where perception, cognition, and action are accounted for an hermeneutic circle in dyadic interaction. From our interpretation of the concept ofactive inferenceinfree-energy principletheory, we propose an open-source methodology namedneural robotics library(NRL) for experimental human/neurorobot interaction, wherein a demonstration program namedvirtual Cartesian robot(VCBot) provides an opportunity to experience the aforementioned embodied interaction to general audiences. Lastly, through a study case, we discuss some ways human-robot primary intersubjectivity can contribute to cognitive science research, such as to the fields of developmental psychology, educational technology, and cognitive rehabilitation. (shrink)

We contest two claims: (1) that language, understood as the processing of abstract symbolic forms, is an instrument of cognition and rational thought, and (2) that conventional notions of turn-taking, exchange structure, and move analysis, are satisfactory as a basis for theorizing communication between living, feeling agents. We offer an enkinaesthetic theory describing the reciprocal affective neuro-muscular dynamical flows and tensions of co- agential dialogical sense-making relations. This “enkinaesthetic dialogue” is characterised by a preconceptual experientially recursive temporal dynamics forming the (...) deep extended melodies of relationships in time. An understanding of how those relationships work, when we understand and are ourselves understood, when communication falters and conflict arises, will depend on a grasp of our enkinaesthetic intersubjectivity. (shrink)

To model the organization of levels' of cortical dynamics, at least some general scheme for hierarchy, functional diversity, and proper intrinsic control must be provided. Rhythmic control forces the system to iterate its state by short trajectories, which makes it much more stable and predictable without discarding the desirable ability of chaotic systems to make rapid phase transitions. Rhythmic control provides a fundamentally different systems dynamics, one not provided by models that allow the emergence of continuous trajectories in the systems (...) state space. (shrink)

Two hypotheses concerning nonlinear elements in complex systems are contrasted: that neurons, intrinsically unstable, are stabilized through embedding in networks and populations; and, conversely, that cortical neurons are intrinsically stable, but are destabilized through embedding in cortical populations and corticostriatal feedback systems. Tests are made by piecewise linearization of nonlinear dynamics at nonequilibriumoperating points, followed by linear stability analysis.

The concept of an attractor in a mathematical dynamical system is reviewed. Emphasis is placed on the distinction between a cell assembly, the corresponding attractor, and the attractor dynamics. The biological significance of these entities is discussed, especially the question of whether the representation of the stimulus requires the full attractor dynamics, or merely the cell assembly as a set of reverberating neurons. Comparison is made to Freeman's study of dynamic patterns in olfaction.

Hebbian mechanisms are justified according to their functional utility in an evolutionary sense. The selective advantage of correlating content-contingent stimuli reflects the putative common cause of temporally or spatially contiguous inputs. The selective consequences of such correlations are discussed by using examples from the evolution of signal form in sexual selection and model-mimic coevolution. We suggest that evolutionary justification might be considered in addition to neurophysiology plansibility when constructing representational models.

Interpreting the Miyashita et al. experiments in terms of a cellassembly representation does not adequately explain the performance of Miyashita's monkeys on novel stimuli. We will argue that the latter observations point to acompositionalrepresentation and suggest a dynamics involving rapid and reversible binding of distinct activity patterns.

This paper proposes that human expression of pain in the presence or absence of caregivers, and the detection of pain by observers, arises from evolved propensities. The function of pain is to demand attention and prioritise escape, recovery, and healing; where others can help achieve these goals, effective communication of pain is required. Evidence is reviewed of a distinct and specific facial expression of pain from infancy to old age, consistent across stimuli, and recognizable as pain by observers. Voluntary control (...) over amplitude is incomplete, and observers can better detect pain that the individual attempts to suppress rather than amplify or simulate. In many clinical and experimental settings, the facial expression of pain is incorporated with verbal and nonverbal vocal activity, posture, and movement in an overall category of pain behaviour. This is assumed by clinicians to be under operant control of social contingencies such as sympathy, caregiving, and practical help; thus, strong facial expression is presumed to constitute an attempt to manipulate these contingencies by amplification of the normal expression. Operant formulations support skepticism about the presence or extent of pain, judgments of malingering, and sometimes the withholding of caregiving and help. To the extent that pain expression is influenced by environmental contingencies, however, could equally plausibly constitute the release of suppression according to evolved contingent propensities that guide behaviour. Pain has been largely neglected in the evolutionary literature and the literature on expression of emotion, but an evolutionary account can generate improved assessment of pain and reactions to it. (shrink)

Before one can talk about global arrays and multimodal detection, one must be clear about the concept of information: How is it different from energy and how is it detected? And can it come to specify a needed movement? We consider these issues in our commentary.

Amit's “Attractor Neural Network” perspective on cognition raises difficult technical problems already met by prior dynamical models. This commentary sketches briefly some of them concerning the internal topological structure of attractors, the constituency problem, the possibility of activating simultaneously several attractors, and the different kinds of dynamical structures one can use to model brain activity: point attractors, strange attractors, synchronized arrays of oscillators, synfire chains, and so forth.

For some years there has been a controversy about whether brain state variables such as EEG or neuronal spike trains exhibit chaotic behaviour. Wright & Liley claim that the local dynamics measured by spike trains or local field potentials exhibit chaotic behaviour, but global measures like EEG should be governed by linear dynamics. We propose a different scheme. Based on simulation studies and various experiments, we suggest that the pointwise dimension of EEG time series may provide some valuable information about (...) underlying neuronal generators. (shrink)

We focus on one aspect of Wright & Liley's target article: the linearity of the EEG. According to the authors, some nonlinear models of the cortex can be reduced (approximated) to the linear case at the millimetric scale. We argue here that the statement about the linear character of EEG is too strong and that EEG exhibits nonlinear features which cannot be ignored.

Some dichotomies related to modeling electrocortical activities are analyzed. Attractor neural networks versus biologically motivated models, near-equilibrium versus nonequilibrium processes, linear and nonlinear dynamics, stochastic and chaotic patterns, local and global scale simulation of cortical activities are discussed.

The context of the target article is delimited again, underlining the intended locationof the argument in the bottomup hierarchy of brain study. The central message is that collective delay activity distributions (reverberations) in cortical modules extend the role of a spike (a potentialinformation carrier across long distances) to an active memory of structured, learned information that can be carried across long time intervals. Moreover, the population code of the reverberations makes them readable down the cortical processing stream. Most of the (...) critical comments are then interpreted and addressed in relation to misreading of the proper context. The price for the limitation of the context (in cognitive, behavioral, and computational terms) is compared with the advantages of a clear, direct contact with experiment on the one hand and with a well controlled body of modeling and analysis on the other. (shrink)

Biological understanding of human cognitive functions is incomplete because of failure to understand the evolution of complex functions and organisms in general. Here, that failure is attributed to an aspect of the standard neo-Darwinian synthesis, namely commitment to evolution by natural selection of genetic programs in stable environments, a position that cannot easily explain the evolution of complexity. When we turn to consider more realistic, highly changeable environments, however, another possibility becomes clearer. An alternative to genetic programs—dubbed “biogrammars”—is proposed here (...) to deal with complex, changing environments and explain evolving complexity from pre-genetic life to human socio-cognitive functions. (shrink)

The neurophysiological evidence from the Miyashita group's experiments on monkeys as well as cognitive experience common to us all suggests that local neuronal spike rate distributions might persist in the absence of their eliciting stimulus. In Hebb's cell-assembly theory, learning dynamics stabilize such self-maintaining reverberations. Quasi-quantitive modeling of the experimental data on internal representations in association-cortex modules identifies the reverberations (delay spike activity) as the internal code (representation). This leads to cognitive and neurophysiological predictions, many following directly from the language (...) used to describe the activity in the experimental delay period, others from the details of how the model captures the properties of the internal representations. (shrink)

It is a standard understanding that we live in time. In fact, the whole physical world as described in sciences is based on the idea of objective time. For centuries, we have defined time ever so minutely, basing them on finer and finer event measurements that we do not even notice that we have made an inductive leap when it comes to time—we can measure time, so we experience time. In the current work, I wish to critique this inductive leap (...) and examine what it means to experience time. We are embodied and embedded cognitive agents, constrained by our body as well as in continuous interaction with our environment. So another way to ask the question of temporal experience would be—how embodied is time? I posit that experience of time spoken of in general literature is a linguistic construct, in that, the idea of experience of time overshadows the actual phenomenal contents of time perception. Moreover, time perception itself comes from a post-facto judgment of events. It has also been observed that the order of events in time can be altered to create an illusion of violation of causality itself. This points to the possibility that events are arranged in a temporal map that can be read off by higher cognitive substrates. In the current work, we go on to explore the nature of such a map as it emerges from an embodied mind. (shrink)

The temporal orientations of any sociocultural grouping are major factors comprising its central identity. The manner in which the past (memories), the present (perception), and the future (anticipation/expectation) are commonly articulated also concern cultural identity. The identity of a cultural group is altered by developmental changes in time keeping and related objective, scientific temporalities.Three modes of temporality, objective, narrative, and transcendental, congruent with different kinds of brain processes, are common throughout our planet. Objective temporality tends to alter and replace traditional (...) narrative and transcendental (spiritual) time, timing, and tempos. Objective temporality is concerned with what is transitory, modern and “progressive”. Objective time is not a traditional form of cultural time; it is a derived Westernized scientific imposition, rather than any cultural formation. This essay develops a new conception of how semiosis occurs. All information is essentially rhythmic, transduced through sensory systems as signals in a space-time domain, but deposited for use into a spectral thermodynamic domain in the human cortex.A “chronemic” perspective, (temporality as it is based in semiotic processes related to human communication) is assumed throughout. Such a perspective appears to be somewhat novel in both communication and semiotic studies. (shrink)

The network model of EEG formation has revealed a unified mechanism for disparate EEG phenomena: for various reactions as well as for ontogenetic and phylogenetic differences. EEG rhythmicity was shown to be an external manifestation of the functioning of the intracortical stabilizing system which provides normal informational operations in the cerebral cortex.

Although this is an impressive piece of modeling work, I worry that the two models that Wright & Liley have created do not yet provide us with useful empirical information regarding brain processing.

There is some complementarity of models for the origin of the electroencephalogram (EEG) and neural network models for information storage in brainlike systems. From the EEG models of Freeman, of Nunez, and of the authors' group we argue that the wavelike processes revealed in the EEG exhibit linear and near-equilibrium dynamics at macroscopic scale, despite extremely nonlinear – probably chaotic – dynamics at microscopic scale. Simulations of cortical neuronal interactions at global and microscopic scales are then presented. The simulations depend (...) on anatomical and physiological estimates of synaptic densities, coupling symmetries, synaptic gain, dendritic time constants, and axonal delays. It is shown that the frequency content, wave velocities, frequency/wavenumber spectra and response to cortical activation of the electrocorticogram (ECoG) can be reproduced by a “lumped” simulation treating small cortical areas as single-function units. The corresponding cellular neural network simulation has properties that include those of attractor neural networks proposed by Amit and by Parisi. Within the simulations at both scales, sharp transitions occur between low and high cell firing rates. These transitions may form a basis for neural interactions across scale. To maintain overall cortical dynamics in the normal low firing-rate range, interactions between the cortex and the subcortical systems are required to prevent runaway global excitation. Thus, the interaction of cortex and subcortex via corticostriatal and related pathways may partly regulate global dynamics by a principle analogous to adiabatic control of artificial neural networks. (shrink)

We outline fresh findings that show that our macroscopic electrocorticographic (ECoG) simulations can account for synchronous multiunit pulse oscillations at separate, simultaneously activated cortical sites and the associated gamma-band ECoG activity. We clarify our views on the approximations of dynamic class applicable to neural events at macroscopic and microscopic scales, and the analogies drawn to classes of ANN behaviour. We accept the need to introduce memory processes and detailed anatomical and physiological information into any future developments of our simulations. On (...) the issue of intrinsic cortical stability and the role of extrinsic fibre systems in maintaining stability, we argue that this position is not in extreme contradiction to those of our commentators, and that the mechanisms implicit in our simulations' properties imply rich computational possibilities. We discuss some of the reasons for and against the existence of significant global resonances in the brain and explain why such behaviour appears absent in our simulations. Last, we discuss other phenomena, such as rhythmic driving of the cortex, which have not yet been introduced into our models, and indicate lines for future development of the simulations. (shrink)

The unification of microscopic and macroscopic models of brain behaviour is of paramount importance and Wright & Liley's target article provides some important groundwork. In this commentary, I propose that a useful approach for the future is to incorporate a developmental perspective into such models. This may be an important constraint, providing a key to understanding the nature of macroscopic measures of brain function such as functional measures like ERP.

Amit defines cell assemblies aslocal cortical neuron populationswith strong internal connections. However, Hebb himself proposed that cell assemblies are distributed over different cortical areas (nonlocal ortranscortical assemblies). We review evidence from cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology supporting the assumption that cell assemblies are transcortical.

Our model integrates the nativist assumption of prespecified neural structures underpinning basic emotions with the constructionist view that emotions are assembled from psychological constituents. From a dynamic systems perspective, the nervous system self-organizes in different ways at different time scales, in relation to functions served by emotions. At the evolutionary scale, brain parts and their connections are specified by selective pressures. At the scale of development, connectivity is revised through synaptic shaping. At the scale of real time, temporary networks of (...) synchronized activity mediate responses to situations. To the degree that humans share common emotional functions, neural structuration is similar across scales, giving rise to “basic” emotions. However, unique developmental and situational factors select for neural configurations mediating emotional variants. (shrink)

John Bickle's new book on philosophy and neuroscience is aptly subtitled 'a ruthlessly reductive account'. His 'new wave metascience' is a massive attack on the relative autonomy that psychology enjoyed until recently, and goes even beyond his previous (Bickle, J. (1998). Psychoneural reduction: The new wave. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.) new wave reductionsism. Reduction of functional psychology to (cognitive) neuroscience is no longer ruthless enough; we should now look rather to cellular or molecular neuroscience at the lowest possible level for (...) explanations of memory, consciousness and attention. Bickle presents a fascinating set of experimental cases of such molecule-to-mind explanations. This book qualifies as a showcase of naturalism in the philosophy of mind. Naturally, many of the traditional conceptual approaches in the philosophy of mind are given short shrift, but - in Bickle's metascientific scheme - the role of philosophy of science also seems reduced to explicating laboratory findings. The present reviewers think that this reductionism suffers from overstretching; in particular, the idea of 'explanation in a single bound' from molecule to mind is a bit too ruthless. Still, Bickle's arguments are worth serious attention. (shrink)

A distinction should be made between the formation of stimulus-driven associations and cognitive concepts. To test the learning mode of a neural network, we propose a simple and classic input-output test: the discrimination shift task. Feed-forward PDP models appear to form stimulus-driven associations. A Hopfield network should be extended to apply the test.

Wright & Liley provide an advance in addressing the interaction of multiple scales of processing in the brain. It should address in more detail the biological evidence that underlies the models it proposes to replace.

Amit argues that the local neuronal spike rate that persists (reverberating) in the absence of the eliciting stimulus represents the code of the eliciting stimulus. Based on the general argument that the inferred functional meaning of reverberation depends in part on the type of representational assumptions, reverberations may only be important for the encoding of contextual information.

The Miyashita experiments are very interesting and the results should be examined from a viewpoint of attractor dynamics. Amit's target article shows a path toward realistic modeling by artificial neural networks (ANN), but it is not necessarily the only one. I introduce another model that can explain a substantial part of the empirical observations and makes an interesting prediction. This model consists of such units that have nonmonotonic input-output characteristics with local inhibition neurons.

Recurrent excitation is experimentally well documented in cortical populations. It provides for intracortical excitatory biases that linearize negative feedback interactions and induce macroscopic state transitions during perception. The concept of the local neighborhood should be expanded to spatial patterns as the basis for perception, in which large areas of cortex are bound into cooperative behavior with near-silent columns as important as active columns revealed by unit recording.

(1997). The evolution of consciousness as a self‐organizing information system in the society of other such systems. World Futures: Vol. 50, No. 1-4, pp. 609-616.

Simulation of brain dynamics requires the use of accurate empirical data. This commentary points out major errors in some of the empirical data used in Wright & Laley's simulation. The simulation is quantitatively very different from the real cortex, and may also have important qualitative differences.

Brain damage may doubly dissociate cognitive modules, but the practice of revealing dissociations is predicated on modularity being true (T. Shallice, 1988). This article questions the utility of assuming modularity, as it examines a paradigmatic double dissociation of reading modules. Reading modules illustrate two general problems. First, modularity fails to converge on a fixed set of exclusionary criteria that define pure cases. As a consequence, competing modular theories force perennial quests for purer cases, which simply perpetuates growth in the list (...) of exclusionary criteria. The first problem leads, in part, to the second problem. Modularity fails to converge on a fixed set of pure cases. The second failure perpetuates unending fractionation into more modules. (shrink)

We present simulation results of an olfactory cortex model complementing the results presented in Wright & Liley's target article. We show how the cortical dynamics as expressed in EEG can be regulated by neuromodulation and discuss how the system can attain global stability without cortical-subcortical interaction, as presumed necessary by Wright & Liley. Network structure is shown to be crucial.