In a significant contribution to the study of the brain and
behavior, Coward develops a system model for the human brain based
on a new physiologically based theory of learning and memory. The
work is primarily intended for neuropsychologists, but will be of
interest to anyone concerned with understanding the brain as a
functioning system. The author has twenty years' experience in most
of the different aspects of designing complex electronic systems.
Such a system today has up to several billion hardware components
such as individual transistors, and millions of lines of software.
Coward argues that the methodology used to handle the design of
such systems can be modified and adapted to understand the brain.
In the design of electronic systems, the concept instruction makes
it possible to rigorously translate from high level operational
descriptions to detailed descriptions in terms of machine code and
transistor structures. In the brain, the concept pattern can make
it possible to translate between the descriptions of psychology and
physiology and make functional understanding possible. Any change
in the state of a neuron can be interpreted on a system level as
the recognition of a pattern. Pattern is precisely defined and
includes both objects and changes to objects. Based on these
observations, Coward designs a model called the cascaded pattern
extraction hierarchy to explain the functioning of the brain,
showing that the brain can be visualized as a pattern extraction
template, in which successive layers are able to extract
increasingly complex patterns from relatively simple input.
Coward demonstrates that as a pattern extraction template, the
brain forms a hierarchy in connectivity space. Early layers--those
closest to sensory input--can be interpreted as extracting patterns
from simple sensory input. Later layers generate action
recommendations, and later still, they select actions, all within
the same pattern extraction paradigm. According to the model, the
firing of a neuron at these points constitutes both pattern
recognition and action recommendation. Coward's system model not
only provides a framework for understanding and predicting
psychological phenomena, including the functioning of personality,
but also accounts for such apparent anomalies as the difference
between short and long term memory and the fact that localized
brain damage does not remove the memory of individual events.
Widely useful for studies of brain and behavior, Pattern Thinking
also suggests how to identify promising areas to investigate in the
treatment of psychological illnesses.
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