REPRESENTATION (Active or latent)
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 2842 ▶ |
| Object type | Epistemology, ontology or semantics |
Active representation, according to Fr CRICK and Ch. KOCH is the process of explicitation of an implicit representation present in our neural network and evoked by some perception, through a pattern of firing neurons.
These authors write: “A latent representation of a face must also be stored in the brain, probably as a special pattern of synaptic connexions between neurons… For example, you probably have a representation of the Statue of Liberty in your brain, a representation that usually is inactive. If you do think about the statue, the representation becomes active. with the relevant neurons firing away” (1992, p.112).
Of course, there is still a need to explain how these latent representations become established, through some initial perception, internally transformed and made available for retrieval.
In R. FISCHER words, who applies the notion to parallel distributed processing, “… what was learned is not a representation, but the state of all… neuron-like connections” (1992, p.212).
This is the latent representation capacity, out of which we may at will obtain instant representations of what we “know”, according to what and how we “know”.