Place Cells and Human Consciousness: A Force-Dynamic Account
How does conscious thought occur? In the scene 'The cat is next to the dog', the cat is within a proximal distance to the left or right of the dog. This probabilistic proximal left/right cognitive space is an example of a mental 'place field'. A place field -- also
in humans presumably represented by place cells in the hippocampus -- represents latent and thus potentially unconscious thought. Mentally 'seeing' the cat to the left or right is an example of a 'localized point' within a place field. A localized point represents manifest
and thus conscious thought. As proposed, this field-to-point reduction is naturally described in terms of force dynamics, a prominent theory of causal cognition. Possible generalizations from spatial mental imagery to all conscious occurrences of thought and emotion are discussed.
Keywords: cognitive semantics; consciousness; force dynamics; mental imagery; place cells; place fields; spatial cognition; temporal cognition
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Email: [email protected]
Publication date: 01 January 2016
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