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perception, memory, language, and intelligence.
Column
A cortical column is a vertical arrangement of nerve cells, perpendicular to the cortical surface (about 2.5 mm thick in the human), that share certain functional characteristics, whereby they have been identified as “modules” for one neural function or another. The concept has failed, however, on empirical grounds. Instead, cellular aggregates of more or less vertical structure and variable dimensions have been identified in sensory and motor cortices as cell assemblies with common function.
Common law
A legal system developed by judges and juries. It is man-made law in which precedent has decisive importance.
Compatibilism
Philosophical position holding that free will and determinism are compatible, not mutually exclusive.
Computation
Calculation of values in the processing of information. In the brain, as in other physical systems, two forms of computation take place: digital and analog. In the first form, values vary in discontinuous function, all-or-none, such as the action potential of a nerve cell. In the second, values vary in continuous function, such as the frequency of action potentials in an ensemble (cell assembly or network). In the cerebral cortex, even though cells communicate with one another by action potentials, the information (sensory, motor, cognitive, or emotional) transcends the action potential and is processed in analog fashion, by changes in the frequency of such potentials.
Consciousness
Subjective awareness of an external or internal state, object, stimulus, or event.
Content-addressable memory
Memory retrievable by an item of information connatural with its content, such as a contextual association (for example, the memory of a person by the scent of the perfume she often wears). The cortex and a search engine address memory in this fashion, by associations of content.
Corpus callosum
A wide, flat bundle of nerve fibers, or commissure, that beneath the cortex links the two cortical hemispheres together – mostly symmetrical locations. It serves interhemispheric communication.
Cross-temporal contingency
In a sequence of behavior, language, or reasoning, the logical dependence of an action or event on another having occurred previously.
Cytoarchitecture
Microscopic structure of nerve cells and fibers.
Default network
A network of brain regions that are active when the individual is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest. Also called the “default mode network” or “default state network,” its activity is characterized by coherent neuronal oscillations at a rate lower than 0.1 Hz (one every 10 seconds).
Degeneracy
In cognitive neuroscience, it refers to the circumstances under which dissimilar inputs, because of some common characteristic, lead to the same output. Degeneracy is thus a relational property, where similarity leads to constancy. It is the basis of perceptual or executive constancy and the opposite of discrimination.
Delay discount
Depreciation of a benefit, reward, or gain on account of the necessity to wait for it; the longer the wait time, the greater is the depreciation. Delay discount is a major source of consumer credit and a motive for reliance on government at the expense of private savings.
Desert
Ethically justified reward or punishment.
Determinism
The philosophy that states that for everything that happens in the world there is a cause. Events are bound by causality in such a way that any state of physical nature is completely determined by prior or concomitant states.
Drug addiction
Physical – that is, biological – dependence on the continued ingestion or injection of certain toxic agents such as alcohol, cocaine, amphetamines, and opium-derived substances. When severe, it severely curtails personal freedom.
Dualism
In cognitive neuroscience, the position that brain and mind are two different, though interactive, substances.
Economic liberalism
Economic philosophy that advocates