  Perhaps the most important question posed by brain research is: How the brain
gives rise to the mind. To answer this question, we have primarily relied on
the connectionist paradigm: The brain's entire knowledge and thinking skills
are thought to be stored in the connections; and the mental operations are
executed by network computations. I propose here an alternative paradigm: Our
knowledge and skills are stored in metabotropic receptors (MRs) and the G
protein-gated ion channels (GPGICs). Here, mental operations are assumed to be
executed by the functions of MRs and GPGICs. As GPGICs have the capacity to
close or open branches of dendritic trees and axon terminals, their states
transiently re-route neural activity throughout the nervous system. First, MRs
detect ligands that signal the need to activate GPGICs. Next, GPGICs
transiently selects a subnetwork within the brain. The process of selecting
this new subnetwork is what constitutes a mental operation -- be it in a form
of directed attention, perception of a grandmother or making a decision.
Synaptic connections and network computations play only a secondary role,
supporting MRs and GPGICs. According to this new paradigm, the mind emerges
within the brain as the function of MRs and GPGICs whose primary function is to
continually select the pathways over which neural activity will be allowed to
pass. It is argued that MRs and GPGICs solve the scaling problem of
intelligence from which the connectionism paradigm suffers.
