Physiological Representation of Concepts in the Brain

Categorization is a primary application for conceptual knowledge stored in the human brain. Categorization is often based on similarity, involving apparent use of both prototypes and stored exemplars. Some human categorization appears to be rule or theory based rather than based on similarity. Attempts to model categorization often involve multiple subsystems to support the different observed approaches. Any system which must perform a large number of different but interdependent behaviours with limited information handling resources will tend to be constrained within a form called the recommendation architecture. Physiological structures in the brain resemble the forms of this recommendation architecture. The information recording and access mechanisms of the recommendation architecture result in all the different categorization phenomena and use only a single knowledge representation system. Categorization phenomena differ only in the ways in which information is accessed from the representation system.