Account for Neuronal Representations from the Perspective of Neurons
Mounting evidence in neuroscience suggests the possibility of neuronal represen?tations that individual neurons serve as the substrates of different mental represen?tations in a point-to-point way. Combined with associationism, it can potentially ad?dress a range of theoretical problems and provide a straightforward explanation for our cognition. However, this idea is merely a hypothesis with many critical questionsunsolved. In this paper, I will bring up a new framework to defend the idea of neu?ronal representations. Specifically, I propose that our brain’s preference for more activeneurons forces neurons to gain more excitability and discharge more frequently and in?tensely to survive. In response, a neuron has to take strategies to be responsive to an input pattern frequently present and hence becomes its inner representation in effect.The demonstration of how neurons become specialized supports the idea that familiar things will be represented by specialized and dedicated neurons. And these neuronsin turn can improve our cognitive performance for familiar things.