Sensory orientation

Presented to the
Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies

It was interesting for me to see a recent study in neuroscience that supports my theory of reading comprehension [link] Bear with me while I try and explain (or you can duck out now and I won’t be offended). What they found is that working memory interacts with the senses in order to produce a stable view of our surroundings and reduce errors of perception. For one thing, it has to identify signals that are the result of actual sensory events and filter out extraneous signals that are produced by fluctuations inside the nervous system itself (like those caused by changes in activity levels, neurotransmitter concentrations, circadian rhythms, etc..). Neuroscientists refer to this as the ‘sensory orientation’ function [link]. The visual areas in the brain must distinguish changes in actual sensory events from changes in internal activity in order to follow the ‘genuine’ action. They claim that the brain makes this estimate based on principles of ‘Bayesian inference’, which are not much different than principles of ‘Pragmatic inference’. It works something like this: Incoming signals that are considered likely to occur, based on the contents of working memory, are given a boost. Signals considered less likely are held in abeyance and immediately suppressed if subsequent events don’t do anything to rehabilitate them.