Neuroscience has already begun to tell us that we are not the kind of creatures we thought we were; that some of our best-loved everyday assumptions about our selves are misplaced. Many of our social interactions are based on two such cherished concepts. The first is solidity: the idea that we have diamond minds, that our personalities and memories, once formed, change slowly, if at all. The second is free will: the idea that we control, and can therefore be responsible for, at least some of our actions …
With respect to brains, however, the assumption of solidity is simply incorrect, Brains change all the time: everything you perceive, every stimulus received by your senses changes your brain, (Turner 2017: 155 – 156)
Brains are organised so that any given neuron is activated (fires off signals) in response to the inputs it receives. However, those inputs do not carry information about entire objects, but about aspects of things in the world: colour, sound, movement; physical feel. In other words, an individual neuron does not respond to, and thereby in the brain's language represent, an 'object', but one or more features … Representing an entire object, such as a tiger, requires the simultaneous activation of a group of neurons, often in different areas of the cortex: some will respond to the animal's colour, some to stripes. Some to roaring noises, and some to the signals from subcortical areas of the brain which indicate that the body is now going into a high state of alert. (Turner 2017: 183)
The above is from Kathleen Turner's book 'Brain Washing' - a standard for lay people.
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