6th Edition of Neurology World Conference 2026

Abstract

In our opinion, modern brain science has stalled on a problem that it itself has not yet had time to formulate clearly. I formulate this problem in the following question, which reveals a paradigmatic contradiction in our knowledge about the informational activity of the brain. Indeed, on the one hand, our brain, with all its neuro-electrical, neuro-molecular, neuro-ionic, and structural-network properties, is, by and large, a physically existing and physically functioning entity. However, on the other hand, its informational activity, for some reason, "paradoxically" happens biologically (and later in evolution, socially) expediently, as if the brain's informational processes obey some unknown management factor that takes care of the biological (or social) problems of the existence of living beings. So the question of what makes the "physics" of the brain process information in such a way (and we know that not one physical law does not support any biologically expedient process) is a key question, the answer to which could completely change the paradigm of our understanding of how the brain works [1].

The short (but not complete) answer to this question is as follows: neural networks of the brain process information biologically (or socially) appropriately because mental phenomena are formed in its limbic region, which realize the ability of living beings to subjectively evaluate biological (or socially) expediency of information about the surrounding world. It is this ability to subjectively evaluate the expediency of external stimuli and information about them during the elimination of uncertainty arising in the relationship of a living being with the environment that is the key aspect that creates mental motivation for the self-management by a living being of all informational operations in the brain [2].

However, this short answer to the question formulated here, in order to explain the way of the causal inclusion of mental phenomena in the physical activity of the brain, should be supplemented by the following statement. It consists in the following: the ability of our brain to evaluate information through subjective evaluation forms hierarchical relationships in the brain between functionally specific brain structures and creates conditions for the integration of information (G.Tononi) within such Bottom-Up & Top-Down activity [1]. During such activity, management functions are performed precisely by the structures of the limbic region, which realize the ability of a living being to subjectively evaluate something for the purpose of integrating (combining) fragments of past experience into more complex information concepts that fix regularities in their structure. Through these more complex mental informational concepts (mental images, thoughts), control neural networks orchestrate physical processes in subordinate brain structures that directly implement the processes of fixation, integration, and embodiment of information in "informational–well-enriched" motor acts. So, in this way, a living being with an appropriately developed brain under conditions of "pressure" of uncertainty transforms around the world through arbitrary movements from a state of "subjectively undesirable" to a state of "subjectively desirable" [1].

Of course, for a neurophysiologist who use to studying the brain within the paradigm of classical physical determinism, such a solution to the problem, which is considered here within the framework of a paradigm where mental phenomena formed in control neural networks have the ability to orchestrate physical processes in networks controlled by them, is very unusual. But if we need a breakthrough, then let be the breakthrough.