Perceptual Categorisation, Memory, And Learning Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 100):

The fundamental triad of higher brain functions is composed of perceptual categorisation, memory, and learning. (While these functions are often treated separately for the convenience of discussion, it should be kept in mind that, in fact, they are inseparable aspects of a common mental performance.) … Perceptual categorisation is generally necessary for memory, which is, after all, about previous categorisations. … We will see in this chapter that any kind of memory, while based on changes in synaptic strength, is a dynamic system property, one whose characteristics depend on the actual neural structures in which it occurs. To serve the adaptive needs of an animal faced with the unforeseen juxtapositions of events affecting survival, however, learning that affects behaviour is also necessary. Thus, the three fundamental functions — categorisation, memory and learning — are closely connected: The last depends on the first two.

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In Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, perceptual categorisation is effected when events on sensory sheets select specific combinations of neuronal groups out all that happen to be firing at the time.  The selection involves the strengthening of the synapses between the neurones which increases the probability of these neuronal groups — rather than others — firing again in response to the same or similar sensory stimuli.  It is in this sense that neuronal groups are 'selected'.  This process is guided by value systems of the brain, whose values are biologically selected in the history of the species.

On Edelman's model, memory is the ability to repeat a performance.  A perceptual memory is the ability to repeat the performance of the neuronal groups selected in the process of perceptual categorisation.  Learning is the value-guided change in the system of categorisations during the ongoing experience of an organism. 

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, Edelman's model of perceptual categorisation construes the material and relational process that underlie the construal of sensorimotor experience as perceptual meaning.  (However, what an organism 'sees' is the correlation of these perceptual meanings with the meanings of other semiotic systems, such as language in humans or protolanguage in other social species.)

By the same token, perceptual memory is the potential to instantiate the meanings of the perceptual categorisation system, and the act of remembering is the instantiation of such potential.  Learning, then, is the ontogenesis of system potential in the lifetime of an individual.