ABSTRACT
Field theories minimize the microstructural details of the nervous system and concentrate on global patterns of electroneural, electrochemical, or even quantum activity. The history of Gestalt neuroscientific theories of the mind had its roots in preexisting philosophical speculations about the nature of cognitive processes. Kant, for example, stressed the idea that the act of perception was not a passive concatenation of individual events to produce perceptions but rather an active processing of the overall organizational pattern of the information communicated by the stimulus. The Gestalt psychologists carried out a large number of experiments demonstrating the important role of the global pattern and what they believed to be the lesser role played by the individual components on perception. The main conceptual point of the classic Gestalt topological theory of brain representation, was that it was the overall electrical field of brain activity, rather than the action of individual neurons, that was critically important in the representation of psychological function.
