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Circuital and Developmental Explanations for the Cortex

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Neural Mechanisms

Part of the book series: Studies in Brain and Mind ((SIBM,volume 17))

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Abstract

The cerebral cortex manifests a feature that puzzles researchers since early neuroscience: the functional repertoire of the cortex is incredibly vast despite its strikingly uniform structure. This work analyzes the phenomenon of the apparent clash between uniformity and variety of functions, and it pinpoints the sort of explanations that this phenomenon requests. A possible resolution of this tension has been proposed several times in terms of a basic neural circuit so successful to underlie all cortical functions. Circuital models have the virtue of belonging to the mechanistic framework of explanation, and they have greatly improved the understanding of computational properties of the cortex. However, they all lack explanations of the contrast between uniformity and multiplicity of functions in the cortex. A reason for this failure is neglecting the developmental aspect of the cortex, the most likely source of variation in functions. In biology, developmental explanations are receiving increasing attention, but they are often contrasted with the mechanistic ones. I contend that, in the case at hand, the explanandum of the development differs from the ones usually found in developmental biology, and developmental aspects in the cortex can be taken into account within a mechanistic explanation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A four-winged dinosaur bird species.

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  1. Department of Cognitive Science, University of Messina, Messina, Italy

    Alessio Plebe

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    Fabrizio Calzavarini

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    Marco Viola

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Plebe, A. (2021). Circuital and Developmental Explanations for the Cortex. In: Calzavarini, F., Viola, M. (eds) Neural Mechanisms. Studies in Brain and Mind, vol 17. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54092-0_4

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