homunculus

In my first neuroscience course at Columbia University, I learned about the homunculus.

As Buzsáki points out, this entails something like a “homunculus,” a separate experiencer sitting in a mental theater and taking in what the brain “shows” it.

This poorly understood and speculative entity goes by various names—free will, homunculus, decision maker, executive function, intervening variables or simply just a “black box.”

In an article published in Brain in 1937 that first described the work that led to the development and refinement of the homunculus.

Such experiments led to the famous homunculus: a map of which brain regions represent various body parts.