The brain's parietal cortex seems to orchestrate decision-making without single neurons performing 'solos'. Rather, decision-specific motifs emerge as highly organized sequences of short-lived neuronal activity. See Article p.62
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Dias-Ferreira, E., Costa, R. The symphony of choice. Nature 484, 42–43 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/484042a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/484042a
oliver elbs
This "ordered progression of neuronal activity through a population of neurons during decision making" reminds me of Waddington's concept of some "Potential landscape" during ontogenetic development (i.e., an ordered progression of signalling activity through a population of cells during development).
When do neurobiologists ultimately come to understand the "brain" (or nervous system) as such a (dynamic) Potential landscape, with its hills and valleys (i.e., potential basins) ever being modulated and modified (e.g., during learning) and thereby sculpting the myriads of possible ("potential") trajectories of neuronal signalling (and hence potentially of all decision makings, actions, etc. of this mouse)?
But alas, we still do not have a full map of THE whole potential landscape of an individual mouse brain in this very moment, nor some (forensic) map of all "potential landscapes" of all individual brains (i.e., individual bodies) IN THIS VERY MOMENT world-wide.