Endogenous Generation of Goals and Homeostasis

From integrative biology to the nerve impulse: Rethinking neural information and semiotics in functional systems perspective

“…These steps could be critically important, given that in the line with classical bio-electrical models of the nerve impulse, the immediate forms of rapid neural integration—presumably underlying perception, cognition, and sensory-motor control—continue to be analyzed in terms of the physical principles of signal summation and the “arithmetic” interactions of membrane ionic processes in neurons (Drukarch et al, 2019; Payeur et al, 2019; Silver, 2010). In contrast, in FST and semiotic analyses, the possible qualitative forms of closure that these physical processes may functionally realize could be experimentally investigated (Anokhin, 1984; Pattee & Rączaszek-Leonardi, 2012; Sandler & Tsitolovsky, 2008; Tsitolovsky, 2015). That this problem has been hardly resolved or even recognized in subsequent work (for reviews cf.…”

“…Indeed, this basic question—of memory trace erasure or overwriting, in highly excitable cells under continued exposure to new information—is one that seems to be unformulated in corresponding studies currently underway, and is apparently unaddressed in their methodology (Chen et al, 2020; Josselyn & Frankland, 2018; Lisman et al, 2018). This omission can probably be explained only as a consequence of the continuing influence that biologically non-specific models have on concepts of neuronal excitability and integration (Anokhin, 1984), and the long traditions of overlooking the possible qualitative and functional systemic aspects of the problem (Tsitolovsky, 2015). From this viewpoint, the logical alternative would be to examine whether the increased neural excitability, characterizing many forms of memory trace formation in single cells, is not system-specifically limited to certain inputs or variables (relevant to the formed system), and thus, expectably based on the functional closure of respective signaling pathways within the neuron’s intracellular and second messenger systems, while alternative pathways are temporarily blocked or desensitized (Abrams et al, 1998; Hawkins & Byrne, 2015).…”