Neuronal Mechanisms Recording the Stream of Consciousness-A Reappraisal of Wilder Penfield's (1891-1976) Concept of Experiential Phenomena Elicited by Electrical Stimulation of the Human Cortex.
Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) September 1, 2018 R Nitsch, F W Stahnisch
Wilder Penfield's electrical brain stimulation studies from the 1930s to the 1950s were long thought to have uncovered a 'storehouse of memories' caused by neuronal firing. However, a reassessment of his original patient documentation questions that interpretation. Human memory is better understood as context-sensitive and actively reconstructive, not a simple recording of events. Therefore, attempts to reduce all mental phenomena, including memory, solely to cellular and molecular mechanisms cannot rely on Penfield's electrophysiological studies alone as evidence.