Cell Assemblies

• The neural basis of a human concept is a CA.
• It's a reverberating circuit of neurons that can persist.
• So, if I see a pen, my pen CA ignites.
• Many of the neurons in it fire, and they cause other neurons in the CA to fire.
• The CA can persist even when the pen goes out of sight.
• While it is firing, pen is in my short-term memory.
• This is the first big concept in neuro-psychology.
• The CA itself is formed by Hebbian learning from repeated presentation of objects in a class (in this case pens).