A Theoretical Comprehensive Framework for the Process of Theories Formation

Figure 1

The structure of representation of sensations in the brain. (a) Stimuli are perceived via the various sensory modalities. In each modality, a stimulus activates elementary modules of representation. These elementary representations could be combined hierarchically to activate more complex representations, which could be unimodal (belong to one sensory modality) or heteromodal (combining representations in various sensory modalities). The depth of the hierarchy, both unimodal and heteromodal, is rather limited. Also, the number of different modules in the brain is limited. (b) Any module (elementary, higher unimodal, or higher heteromodal) comprises values, which compete among themselves by a mechanism of lateral inhibition. Each of these values (e.g., different faces in the “faces module” or different line tilts in a more basic “lines module”) is activated at any given time with a certain level of intensity out of a discrete set of intensity levels.

(a)

(b)