Self Comes to Mind

Schematics of the convergence-divergence architecture. Four hierarchical levels are depicted. The primary cortical level is shown in small rectangular boxes, and three levels of convergence-divergence (larger boxes) are marked CDZ l , CDZ 2 , and CDR. Between CDZ levels and CDR levels (interrupted arrows), numerous intermediate CDZs are possible. Note that, throughout the network, every forward projection is reciprocated by a return projection (arrows).
    The cortical dispositional space included all the higher-order association cortices in temporal, parietal, and frontal regions; in addition, an old set of dispositional devices remained beneath the cerebral cortex in the basal forebrain, basal ganglia, thalamus, hypothalamus, and brain stem.
    In brief, the image space is the space where explicit images of all sensory types occur, including both the images that become conscious and those that remain unconscious. The image space is located in the map-making brain, the large territory formed by the aggregate of all the early sensory cortices, the regions of cerebral cortex located in and around the entry point of visual, auditory, and other sensory signals into the brain. It also includes the territories of the nucleus tractus solitarius, parabrachial nucleus, and superior colliculi, which have image-making capability.
    The dispositional space is that in which dispositions hold the knowledge base as well as the devices for the reconstruction of that knowledge in recall. It is the source of images in the process of imagination and reasoning and is also used to generate movement. It is located in the cerebral cortices that are not otherwise occupied by the image space (the higher-order cortices and parts of the limbic cortices) and in numerous subcortical nuclei. When dispositional circuits are activated, they signal to other circuits and cause images or actions to be generated.
    The contents exhibited in the image space are explicit , while the contents of the dispositional space are implicit . We can access the contents of images, if we are conscious, but we never access the contents of dispositions directly. Of necessity, the contents of dispositions are always unconscious . They exist in encrypted and dormant form.
    Dispositions produce a variety of results. At a basic level, they can generate actions of many kinds and many levels of complexity—the release of a hormone into the bloodstream; the contraction of muscles in viscera or of muscles in a limb or in the vocal apparatus. But cortical dispositions also hold records of an image that was actually perceived on some previous occasion, and they participate in the attempt to reconstruct a sketch of that image from memory. Dispositions also assist with the processing of a currently perceived image, for instance, by influencing the degree of attention accorded to the current image. We are never aware of the knowledge necessary to perform any of these tasks, nor are we ever aware of the intermediate steps that are taken. We are aware only of results, like a state of well-being, the racing of the heart, the movement of a hand, the fragment of a recalled sound, the edited version of the ongoing perception of a landscape.
    Our memories of things, of properties of things, of people and places, of events and relationships, of skills, of life-management processes—in short all of our memories, inherited from evolution and available at birth or acquired through learning thereafter—exist in our brains in dispositional form, waiting to become explicit images or actions. Our knowledge base is implicit, encrypted, and unconscious .
    Dispositions are not words; they are abstract records of potentialities. The basis for the enactment of words or signs also exists as dispositions before they come to life in the form of images and actions, as in the production of speech or sign language. The rules with which we put words and signs together, the grammar of a language, are also held as dispositions.
More on Convergence-Divergence Zones
     
    A convergence-divergence zone (CDZ) is an ensemble of neurons within which many feedforward-feedback loops make contact. A CDZ receives “feedforward” connections from sensory areas located “earlier” in the signal-processing chains, which begin at the entry point of sensory signals in the cerebral cortex. A CDZ sends reciprocal feedback projections to those originating areas. A CDZ also sends “feedforward” projections to regions