Understanding, consciousness and thermodynamics of cognition

This paper attempts to bring together ideas and experimental findings in the areas of neuroscience, physics and psychology in order to explicate connections between the determinants of human intelligence, such as understanding and consciousness, and processes in the neuronal substrate. A conceptual bridge between the areas is the notion of anticipatory mobilization in living dissipative systems. The notion expresses two ideas: first, living systems must maintain inflows of energy and nutrients at or above the survival minima and, second, dissipative systems cannot react to environmental conditions instantaneously but need to mobilize their responses over time. Under fluid and uncertain conditions, the chances of survival increase when neuronal structures yielding responses that are likely to be rewarded are formed and lined up before the onset of the rewarding conditions. Hence, the anticipatory mobilization. Conditioning is the basic anticipatory mechanism shared by the humans and other species and operating on contiguous stimuli while understanding is an advanced mechanism operating on stimuli separated by indefinitely large temporal intervals and intervening stimulation. The understanding mechanism comprises spontaneous and self-directed processes, consciousness is defined as the experience of exerting effort in the course of the latter. The function of understanding and the underlying neuronal mechanisms are the focus of the paper.