Connectionists: Grandmother neurons

[Rothganger, Fred]

Electrical recordings are an extremely sparse sample of the vast number of neurons in a human brain (or even rodent brain). Perhaps the following paper will help illustrate the level of caution we should exercise in interpreting the roles of particular recorded neurons:

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005268

Just to offer my humble opinion on other topics in this thread:
* It is more likely that any given neuron is functioning as part of a larger ensemble rather than acting alone to represent some concept. That ensemble is more likely to be a dynamical system, and its "representations" are regions or attractors in the state space of the overall system.
* Another way to frame "meaning" is the actions a physical system, such as an animal, takes in the world. Neural states have meaning because they have a direct causal relationship with our body, which in turn has a causal relationship with the environment around us. Specific example: my act of emitting a certain pattern of sounds may change your behavior, which may result in me receiving some food. (Ordering dinner at a restaurant.)
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