If memes are semiotic structures—patterns of meaning instantiated through social interaction—then we must also ask: What grounds these patterns in the body? How does meaning get materially enacted, remembered, and varied in a brain? In this post, we bring memetics into conversation with Edelman’s Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS), to model how memes are materially grounded in systems of value-based selection.
1. The Brain as Selectional System
TNGS proposes that the brain is not a logical machine but a selectional system. It develops and adapts through three interlocking processes:
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Developmental selection: The formation of diverse neuronal groups in early life
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Experiential selection: The strengthening of pathways based on usage and value
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Reentrant mapping: Dynamic coordination across brain regions through feedback
This model sees memory not as retrieval of stored content, but as the selective reactivation of distributed neuronal groups. Each act of remembering is an act of re-performance, shaped by value, context, and prior history.
2. Memes and Repertoire Formation
This gives us a powerful analogue for memes. Just as neural repertoires are selected through repeated activation:
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Meme-types are shaped by repeated cultural activation
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Meme recognition depends on reactivating familiar semiotic patterns
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Variation arises from recombination and overlap of prior patterns
The meme economy, like the brain, is not a system of replication but one of re-selection. This aligns memetics with the same ontological commitments as TNGS: variation, selection, and memory are dynamic, embodied, and history-dependent.
3. Value and Attention
In both systems, value directs selection.
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In TNGS, synaptic changes are influenced by value signals—neurochemical cues tied to reward, salience, and emotion.
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In memetics, cultural value (e.g. humour, status, resonance) directs attention and uptake.
This value orientation shapes what gets remembered and what gets forgotten:
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What we attend to gets reinforced
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What we share gets stabilised
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What we feel gets integrated more deeply into both neural and cultural systems
So memes are not simply signs passed along—they are value-sensitive activations in both brain and culture.
4. From Potential to Instance
Just as neuronal groups actualise potential meaning in thought and action, meme-users actualise semiotic potential in each new meme instance. This connects the cline of instantiation in SFL with the dynamics of selection in TNGS:
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System (meaning potential): Cultural memory, collective semiotic repertoire
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Instance (actualisation): Specific meme performance in context
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Individuation: The unique shaping of meaning potential by the user's own neural and social history
The brain doesn’t store memes. It stores a history of values and selections. Each new meme instance is an emergent, embodied performance, guided by collective memory and personal trajectory.
What’s Next
Now that we’ve linked memetics to its material grounding in the brain, we’re ready to return to the semiotic level to explore the next major topic: individuation. How do meme-users, meme-creators, and meme-audiences each carve out distinct meaning potentials? And how does that shape the ecology of memes in culture?
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