ABSTRACT
I begin by discussing the question of how we can observe the activity of the brain experimentally, and what the problems are of interpreting this activity. This is only a preliminary discussion to set the scene for the two experiments and simulation discussed later. The first experiment shows how we can identify the representation of a stimulus in the brain. In simple experiments we can do this with a high degree of success. In the second experiment, I analyze how we can identify invariance of constituents of language. To keep the discussion simple, I will only consider the identification of phonemes. All of the same methods can be used for words or sentences as larger constituents. In the final part, I consider, at a more general level, a simulation of some behavioral experiments in terms of what we hope are promising ideas about how the brain is actually computing in a physical way. The brain associations are conditioning connections, familiar from many years of behavioral studies.
