More recently, I encountered a similar model that clearly explained the value of portability. This model has had a great amount of influence on my project. It was the cognitive psychologist, Steven Kaplan, who introduced me to a portable model of human cognition in his course, "Neural Models: Mechanisms of Learning" (Kaplan Neural). His model of human learning is neuropsychological. He proposes many rich explanations about our neural circuitry and its general behavior, which is all based on how an information-reliant organism might evolve. Kaplan explained, for example, why humans have preferences for particular environments. We seem to be attracted to legible, mysterious, coherent, and complex scenes (Kaplan, “Preference” 587). He explains that these preferences reflect the environment's potential to provide our genetic ancestors with new information. Consequently, we too tend to seek fresh information, because we need to know about our inhabited domain's friends, foes, predators, or resources. Although, gaining this information could be treacherous. Straying too far from what's familiar to us might mean that we find ourselves without a map. (Kaplan, “Preference” 590)

Evolution has developed the human mind into a kind of tethered information-seeking device. Fear of the unknown pulls it inwards toward familiar territory, but this eventually gets boring to our inquisitive minds, bouncing us back away from the familiar. So we move in the direction of unknown terrain to explore and gain new knowledge, only to be pulled back “home” to lessen our confusion. This cycle of familiarity, boredom, exploration, and returning home with new knowledge demonstrates how we've evolved to live and learn in complex environments. This is how the human mind builds updated convenient fictions or “cognitive maps” that help us to navigate our landscape. It is no coincidence that “The Flocking Party” became a sort of narrative environment, where, unlike a book, the reader chooses their own path and, unlike most movies, they can go through at a comfortable pace. It is a cross between a book and a movie. It is a narrative structure that is flexible to its reader. It would be misleading, though, to say that the reader is not directed in any way. I paid close attention to the balance of coherence, mystery, legibility, and complexity, Kaplan's keys to environmental preference.

The neurological basis for Kaplan's theories stems from the founder of neuropsychology, Donald Hebb. Hebb believed that changes in neural structures occur when any kind of learning happens, be it perceptual learning (like tasting the difference between two wines) or learning as we commonly think of it (reading, writing, arithmetic) (Hebb 17). The strength and order of connections between neurons shapes our cognitive structures, which affects how the neurons will fire the next time. Neurons are always causing other neurons to fire through long chain reactions. Hebb would have referred to a circuit of these connections as a cell assembly (Hebb 69). These circuits are representations, stand-ins, receptors of things and ideas that are built from experiences. When a cell assembly is activated, its participating neurons activate one another in a kind of syncopated succession, reverberating as a networked loop. I was very attracted to the idea of a structure that was like a network and a spinning top. The activity that goes around and round spins outward to stimulate other connected cell assemblies, giving the structure a "felt" presence in the mind.

Both perception and cognition are built on this basic unit of the cell assembly. When a cell assembly has enough stimulation from the senses or from other cell assemblies, it "perceives" them, by turning on. In this model, unlike many models of artificial intelligence, information does not move around from place to place in the brain. Rather, representations are activated within set architectures, and activity is passed along from structure to structure. Kaplan also calls groupings of these cell assemblies “internal representations" (Kaplan, Cognition 38). They are like recall devices for things in the world that turn on, if there is the right stimulation. And they are all located in your head, which is hard to lose. These useful and portable models are used for perception and cognition. Since their activation is based on statistics, your perception of an event or situation is reliant on how the connections are previously structured. “You” don't have much control of where the activity will spread. An idea may creep up on you. Leaving home, you suddenly remember that your keys are on the dining room table.