Conceptual mappings and neural reuse
Fecha de publicación: 09-jun-2014 10:02:58
How do we bridge the gap between the study of the mind and the study of the brain? One of the most promising matches between neuroscience and cognitive science is the connection between neural reuse and conceptual mappings. Through evolution and development, brain areas form new connections that lead to new functions. Concepts are projected and integrated, giving rise to novel meanings. Can we find substantial parallels between these two areas of research? Can correspondances between conceptual mappings and neural reuse lead to an integrated theory of meaning construction in the mind-brain?
From over thirty years of conceptual mappings research emerges a picture of the conceptual system as a set of habits for projecting information from one experiential domain to another. Instead of a mere repository of concepts, we have a network connecting mental structures. Mapping is not exceptional: it is the norm. It is through mapping that most concepts are formed, learned, and developed creatively. These ideas have boosted the interest in the most remarkable manifestations of mapping in language and thought: metaphor, metonymy, analogy, counterfactuals, etc.
But the metaphorical brain seems quite insufficient to account for the pervasiveness and complexity of neural reuse. Neural reuse is ubiquitous and dynamic, and many of its results cannot be explained as domain-structuring inheritance, that is, transfer from source to target. Information is not directly transfered; instead, a given system seems to be reused (exapted, redeployed, recycled) for a non-primary purpose because it happens to have a function or a structure that can be recruited, fully or partially, for a new function or task. We need a broader theoretical framework, able to account for those individual phenomena as well as for the general prevalence of neural reuse.
Can conceptual mappings research provide such a framework? Javier Valenzuela and I propose that Fauconnier and Turner's Blending Theory and Michael Anderson's massive redeployment hypothesis for neural reuse (MRH) are good places to start. In Blending Theory, just like in neural reuse, a given item, once identified as potentially useful, is integrated into the network under construction. If necessary and possible, the item is adjusted for optimization in its new function. If it works, the item is kept in the network, although it still remains available for its older functions. Networks and their components are discarded and entrenched in a dynamic, extremely agile process. Blending, just like neural reuse, is not direct transfer, but the construction of a new whole with old pieces. The novel properties are not borrowed from the structures being reused, but result from their performance in a new network.
A model of conceptual mapping habits fully compatible with neural reuse may include the following:
Network thinking rather than direct binary transfer.
Flexibility in the activation, selection and integration of conceptual and neural patterns.
Focus on emergence.
Emphasis on competing optimality principles.
Detailed examination of how context and goals, including cultural diachrony, shape the process of integration.
A model of entrenchment not based on ontological projection, but on the idea of “attaining a niche” through instance-based learning and context-sensitive usage.
The paper:
Pagán Cánovas, C. & Valenzuela, J. 2014. Conceptual mappings and neural reuse. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8: 261.
Go to Mike Anderson's Action-Grounded Cognition Lab.