Spontaneous Activation

Richard Bowles (my PhD student) and I then produced some work on Spontaneous Activation Journal of Cognitive Systems (2004).
The idea is that in the brain, neurons occasionally fire despite having no external stimulus.
Roughly we showed that:
1. Spontaneous activation could set unstimulated regions to initial base rates.
2. CAs could recruit new neurons due to spontaneous neural activation.
4. Spontaneous activation could ignite a CA by itself.
5. It also suggested that spontaneous activation could erase memories, or help them persist.
Collectively this enables a lot of things to happen including spreading beyond the basic sensory input, and variable binding.