The Barnacle Bay Light

Filing old articles after moving, I came across photocopies that looked worth re-reading. I just pondered over a few pages from a book by the great neuroanatomist CJ Herrick and couldn't help but be taken with his sweeping (and in the 1920's very modern) analogy of the cortex to an amplifier. I'm interested in spontaneous movement (ie seemingly non-directed behaviour) and think this is as reasonable a hypothesis as any other:

The way the cortex actually works as an amplifier of very feeble sensory stimulation may be seen in the case of a man who is drifting at sea in a catboat after dark in a fog. He has no compass and is "all at sea" about his position and course. He knows he is drifting but whether landward or seaward he has no means of finding out. While straining eyes and ears for the faintest directive sign, the fog breaks momentarily and he glimpses a point of faint red light on the port bow. The Barnacle Bay light! He notes its direction with reference to wind and tipe-rip and takes his couse down the wind in serene confidence that it will take him directly to his haven.

A twinkle of light, the smallest stimulus to which his retina is sensitive, instantly transforms the slump of dejection into hilarious elation; with a shout of joy he leaps to halyard and tiller and that flash of perception may guide his course for hours to come.