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Title:THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CAUSALLY COUPLED, STABLE NEURONAL ASSEMBLIES FOR THE PSYCHOLOGICAL TIME ARROW
DOI No:10.1142/9789812701596_0009
Source:ENDOPHYSICS, TIME, QUANTUM AND THE SUBJECTIVE (pp 149-162)
Author(s):HARALD ATMANSPACHER
Also at Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Garching.

Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, Wilhelmstr. 3a, 79098 Freiburg, Germany

THOMAS FILK
Also at Institute of Physics, University of Freiburg, and Parmenides Foundation, Munich.

Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, Wilhelmstr. 3a, 79098 Freiburg, Germany

HERBERT SCHEINGRABER
Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, 85740 Garching, Germany

Abstract:Stable neuronal assemblies are generally regarded as neural correlates of mental representations. Their temporal sequence corresponds to the experience of a direction of time, sometimes called the psychological time arrow. We show that the stability of particular, biophysically motivated models of neuronal assemblies, called coupled map lattices, is supported by causal interactions among neurons and obstructed by non-causal or anti-causal interactions among neurons. This surprising relation between causality and stability suggests that those neuronal assemblies that are stable due to causal neuronal interactions, and thus correlated with mental representations, generate a psychological time arrow. Yet this impact of causal interactions among neurons on the directed sequence of mental representations does not rule out the possibility of mentally less efficacious non-causal or anti-causal interactions among neurons.
Keywords:Causation; Coupled Map Lattices; Neuronal Assemblies; Psychological Time Arrow; Stability
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