Reinforcement of synapses in neural processes is possibly “neural recruitment” (after Lakoff)

Something like what Lakoff refers to in his talks on YouTube (TODO: get proper bibliography) as “neural recruitment” must be happening in what Bray terms “reinforcement of synapses between contiguous cells”.

This also has to do with Maturana and Varela’s notion of the material basis of biology.

References:

Bray, Wetware (2009), p. 217

Note that Hebb's prescription does not imply action at a distance; he was most emphatic about that. His two cells, A and B, were already linked by a synapse, presumably having become connected during the growth of nerve processes during development. Something like 50 percent of the synapses in a newborn brain are "silent" -having no detectable function. So you can, if you wish, imagine previous unused synapses becoming larger and gaining a voice because of the coincident firing of two nerve cells already in contact.

Think of a dog in a Pavlovian experiment, being trained to salivate when a bell rings. Many nerve cells will participate in this new reflex, but the eventual circuit must be built step by step by the reinforcement of synapses between contiguous cells. Suppose, for example, that nerve cell A fires whenever the bell rings and nerve cell B fires when the dog salivates. Suppose, moreover, that, for reasons completely external to the dog's nervous system, whenever the bell rings, food is produced.

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