The brain is a context machine

Abstract

This work was supported by a grant from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; number NI 708/2-1), the Hertie Foundation, Max-Planck Geselschaft, and Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies. Henri Matisse, a famous French artist said the following about the way he worked: “I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things.” Little has he known that, having a human brain, he could not have done much otherwise. The thesis of the present article is that the default modus operandi of the brain is to process each input in relation to the context in which it occurs. Due to the very principles by which the nervous system is created, it has no other option but base its operations on contextual comparison. These comparisons are embedded so deeply into the function of our brains that without context, our perception would become numb, our ability to think would cease, and our consciousness would turn off. Inputs to the brain are not represented in their absolute values or categories. Instead, representations of inputs are made exclusively in relation to other inputs—past and present. These contextual comparisons operate both in time and in space, comparing the inputs either against the past or against other locations. By comparing rather than isolating, the brain works predominantly with discontinuities in the inputs, charging its computational power by the changes and differences in sensory activations.