Employing the suggestive metaphor of neuroscientist Luiz Pessoa, David Brooks, in the New York Times, describes neural processing as “a flock of swirling starlings,” otherwise known as a murmuration. That metaphor alludes to the continuously changing patterns of activation across the plethora of complex, interconnected neuronal networks that populate both the cerebral cortex and the brain’s various subcortical structures. Such networks can contain anywhere from dozens to many tens of thousands of neurons. Those networks integrate inputs about:

These networks are also constantly forwarding the results of their integrative activities with all of that information on to other networks with which they are directly connected, both downstream and usually upstream—as feedback—as well. Such endlessly changing patterns of activation are just like, for the swirling flock, the collective consequences of the many movements of the individual starlings, who are primarily influenced by the motions of the six or seven other starlings closest to them.

It is worth noting that it is precisely the computational modeling four decades ago of these dynamics of neural networks that provided the foundational insights,........

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