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How Does the Brain Create, Change, and Selectively Override its Rules of Conduct?

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Neurodynamics of Cognition and Consciousness

Part of the book series: Understanding Complex Systems ((UCS))

Abstract

How do we know to talk openly to our friends but be guarded with strangers? How do we move between work place, club, and house of worship and fit our behavior to each setting? How do we develop context-dependent rules about what we may eat? We solve such problems readily, but are a long way from designing intelligent systems that can do so. Yet enough is known about cognitive and behavioral functions of three regions of prefrontal cortex, and their subcortical connections, to suggest a neural theory of context-dependent rule formation and learning. Rules that an individual follows can change, either because of personal growth or change in stress. This can be partly explained by the interplay between signals from the hippocampus, signifying task relevance, and the amygdala, signifying emotional salience. Both sets of signals influence the basal ganglia gate that selectively disinhibits behaviors in response to context.

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Authors
  1. Daniel S. Levine
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, 33 Oxford St, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

    Leonid I. Perlovsky

  2. Computational Neurodynamics Laboratory 373 Dunn Hall, Department of Computer Science University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152, USA

    Robert Kozma

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Levine, D.S. (2007). How Does the Brain Create, Change, and Selectively Override its Rules of Conduct?. In: Perlovsky, L.I., Kozma, R. (eds) Neurodynamics of Cognition and Consciousness. Understanding Complex Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73267-9_8

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