Neural mechanisms as an object of the effects of environmental selection. Scientific and professional meetings

Abstract

From a selectionist perspective, behaviour is a product of the combined effect of three different types of environments: an ancestral environment which is a species genes selector, an individual environment that acts as a selector of an organism's behavior, and a cultural environment which selects behavior from a verbal community. Each one of these selection processes cause relatively permanent changes on material entities, from which behavior can be maintained. Biological processes mediating selection of ancestral environments, are genetic mechanisms; processes mediating cultural selection, are verbal related signs; and those mediating the individual environment, are neural mechanisms. Based on this argument, if environment - behavior relations are learned trough an organism's life, then the selection effect must be focused on the neural process underlying learning and not on the open behaviour. Some theories and experiments are reviewed to sustain this position.