Heterarchy in the Brain: Control as a Spectrum, Not a Chain of Command
Abstract
Neuroscience treats the brain as a control hierarchy, with cortical systems governing subcortical mechanisms. We argue that this mistakes a configuration for an architecture. Local asymmetries of influence are real, but control is relational and process-specific; because neural elements constrain one another across concurrent processes, relations can form cycles that resist a stable ranking. Evidence from learned action, cortico-cerebellar and thalamocortical loops, and defensive behavior shows that control changes with practice, task phase, urgency, viability demands, and affordances. Hierarchical order therefore characterizes time-bounded configurations, whereas heterarchy characterizes the architecture's repertoire across occasions. We propose a spectrum of control indexed by dynamical decoupling: how far behavior can depend on history, internal state, and anticipated consequences. The account yields experimentally testable predictions.
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BibTeX
@misc{pessoa2026heterarchy,
title = {{Heterarchy in the Brain: Control as a Spectrum, Not a Chain of Command}},
author = {Luiz Pessoa and Andrea Gambarotto},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.04643},
eprint = {2610.04643},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.04643},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Heterarchy in the Brain: Control as a Spectrum, Not a Chain of Command
AU - Luiz Pessoa
AU - Andrea Gambarotto
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/03
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.04643
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.04643
AB - Neuroscience treats the brain as a control hierarchy, with cortical systems governing subcortical mechanisms. We argue that this mistakes a configuration for an architecture. Local asymmetries of influence are real, but control is relational and process-specific; because neural elements constrain one another across concurrent processes, relations can form cycles that resist a stable ranking. Evidence from learned action, cortico-cerebellar and thalamocortical loops, and defensive behavior shows that control changes with practice, task phase, urgency, viability demands, and affordances. Hierarchical order therefore characterizes time-bounded configurations, whereas heterarchy characterizes the architecture's repertoire across occasions. We propose a spectrum of control indexed by dynamical decoupling: how far behavior can depend on history, internal state, and anticipated consequences. The account yields experimentally testable predictions.
ER -