A CREATIVE COGNITION 221in interrelating cognition and feeling. It has been shown that its responses
are more closely related to the outputs of an attractor— what a stimulus
means, or predicts, to the individual— than to the physical characteris-
tics of the stimulus itself.
Likewise, in numerous areas of brain, neuronal activity has been found
to vary according to the size of the reward being expected from an object
or event rather than its physical form. Activity level is also related to the
current degree of motivation. Reciprocally, anticipation of a highly valued
reward is refl ected in mea sures of arousal, attention, and intensity of
motor output. As Luiz Pessoa put it, “Complex cognitive– emotional
be hav iors have their basis in dynamic co ali tions of networks of brain ar-
eas, none of which should be conceptualized as specifi cally aff ective or
cognitive.”^18
Some further evidence has come from experiments with artifi cial
neural networks. Self- supervised networks were mentioned earlier. Even
quite simple versions can form attractors from statistical associations
and interaction par ameters in the inputs. Of par tic u lar interest are ex-
periments in which two or more artifi cial neural networks are coupled
(i.e., have reciprocal connections), much as diff er ent regional networks
are in real brains. It has been shown that as the numbers of units in such
networks increases, clustered and hierarchically or ga nized activity
emerges that was not pres ent in, and could not have been expected from,
the separate networks individually.
Such coalition- based emergent properties are reminiscent of Jean
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. Although intended as a model
of human cognition (of which more in chapter 9), it prob ably also ap-
plies to less- evolved animals, at least up to a certain level. Piaget described
how, in human infants, the coordinations in primitive sensory- motor ac-
tivity become integrated. Th e predictabilities so furnished then became
expressed in be hav ior: for example, in predicting the future location of
a moving object from its current trajectory, as in catching a ball.
Th ese primary coordinations then become nested into more inclusive
co ali tions (coordinations of coordinations) as experience and develop-
ment proceeds. From such co ali tions, all the major abilities of conserva-
tion, number, classifi cation, seriation, logic, and so on, emerge. Whereas
the infant’s fi rst schemas are simply compressed copies of real ity, the
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