On the nature of neural information: A critique of the received view 50 years later

We offer a critical review of the concept of neural information, as received within mainstream neuroscience from Artificial Intelligence. This conception of information is constructed as a conditional probability of a stimulus given a certain neural activation, a correlation that cannot be accessed by the organism and fails to explain its causal organization. We reconstruct an alternative conception of neural information: a pattern of signals that is selected by the organism (as an autonomous system) to contribute to its self-maintenance in virtue of its correlation with external conditions, a correlation that might further be evaluated by the very system. r 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.