The Neuroscience of Freedom and Creativity

pleasure resulting from an action or task, for the performance of which it may have been an incentive.
Reward system
A distributed conglomerate of neural structures at the base of the brain involved in the experience of reward or pleasure, notably including the hypothalamus, the amygdala, the septum, the nucleus accumbens, the orbitofrontal cortex, and the anterior cingulate cortex.
Semantic memory
Memory of facts, meaning, or general knowledge about the world.
Social Darwinism
Application of evolutionary concepts to sociology and politics, with the implicit or explicit assumption that progress results from the outcompetition of inferior groups by superior groups of society.
Superior longitudinal fasciculus
Conglomerate of fiber tracts that connect reciprocally the posterior association cortex (PTO) with the prefrontal cortex. It is critically engaged in all operations of the PA cycle, including language.
Synapse
The point of electrochemical contact between two neurons, through which impulses are transmitted from one to the other. Synapses are at the terminals of fibers (axons) and dendrites that connect one neuron to another. A cognitive network or cognit is made of the neurons, axons, dendrites, and synapses that connect them. The strength of a cognit depends on the synaptic strength of its network. That strength diminishes with aging and lack of cognitive use. In the periphery of a cognit, there are neurons and weak connections that bind the more peripheral elements of a memory or item of knowledge. That weaker penumbra of the cognit is especially liable to forgetting and accounts for phenomena like “priming” and intuition. It may serve the rehabilitation of memory after cortical damage.
Syntax
The rules and principles that govern the structuring of sentences in any individual language.
Teleology
Philosophy holding that nature has final physical causes of prior mechanism, design, or purpose.
Teleonomy
Apparent purposefulness of functions in living organisms that derive from their evolutionary history and are programmed for adaptive and reproductive success.
Temporal binding
Binding of cognitive networks (cognits) across time in the execution of goal-directed behavior.
Thalamus
A conglomerate of nuclei in the center of the brain dedicated to the relay of sensory inputs to the cortex, the functional connections between cortical areas, and the modulation of subcortical motor systems. It is important in the regulation of sleep and wakefulness.
Universal grammar (UG)
A theory in linguistics, credited to Noam Chomsky, proposing that the ability to learn grammar is inherited and hardwired in the brain. That linguistic ability manifests itself by the ease with which, with minimal learning, children from a very early age can correctly implement grammar and the rules of syntax in their linguistic expressions.
Valence
The intrinsic emotional attractiveness (positive valence) or aversiveness (negative valence) of an event, object, or situation.
Wernicke’s area
A portion of PTO – posterior association – cortex important for the understanding of meaning in language. Lesions of this area cause Wernicke’s aphasia, characterized by verbose but nonsensical language.
Working memory
Retention of a memory or item of knowledge with an intended purpose in the proximate future, such as the solution of a problem or the attainment of a goal. The content of working memory may consist of an activated old cognit or a recent percept. Working memory can be legitimately considered attention directed to an internal representation.