Cell Assemblies
- I got into all this stuff back in graduate school when
I did some work with Steve Kaplan and the Sesame
group at the University of Michigan.
- Steve uses Don Hebb's idea that the neural basis of concepts
is Cell Assemblies (CAs).
- These are sub-nets of neurons that have high mutual synaptic
strength.
- These can maintain activation after external stimulus ceases.
- Neurons that are in CAs can be in multiple CAs.
- It's left open whether all neurons are in CAs.
- It's also left open whether CAs can do things aside
from concepts.
- Membership of neurons in CAs is also somewhat fuzzy.
- There has been a lot of mathematical modelling of CAs for
psychological phenomena.
- More recently, quite a few people have been using the
concept for neural simulations.
- It fits nicely in with a lot of the connectionist work.
