LOCALIZATION
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 1936 ▶ |
| Object type | Methodology or model |
W.R. ASHBY explains how, in the nervous system, perceptive dispersion allows for a measure of localisation in cerebral activity, which insures the heterogeneity needed within any complex system (1960, p.l78-80).
He however quotes LASHLEY, who remarked “…that the memory-traces might be localised individually without conflicting with the main facts, provided there were many traces and that they were scattered widely over the cerebral cortex, unified functionally but not anatomically” (Ibid., p.183).
Such a kind of “untidy” localisation in the cerebral network is neither rigorously deterministic, nor totally random and combines the advantages of ordered organization with those of scattering which offers possibilities of numerous new recombinations.