ABSTRACT
There is a further characteristic of the brain which has profound consequences. It concerns another aspect of the mechanism of memory and recall. Perception is a matter of equating external events with internal, mental models. One facet of the mind looks for maximum compatability between the two, that is, the mental equivalent of the biological principle of homeostasis or the striving for equilibrium. In the mental sphere this implies balance between the real world and its representation within the brain. When this happens, subliminal perception can take over. This tendency to opt for the familiar is ably assisted by a further interesting characteristic of the memory-recall system. Whenever a pattern of memory is subject to recall, it undergoes a physiological change. Each time there is activation of a unit of memory, that unit becomes fractionally more sensitive to activation in the future. In other words it has a lower threshold or higher probability of excitation. In engram notation this situation is depicted by additional lines:
What this means in perceptual terms is that events in the visual array which correspond to higher probability patterns of memory will tend to stand out as figure against ground. They push themselves to the front of the queue in the competition for recognition. The result of this is that lower probability features of the environment do not qualify for recognition because the classification process has been completed on the basis of the higher probability evidence.
