NEURONAL REPRESENTATIONS, ASSEMBLIES AND TEMPORAL COHERENCE

As far as the visual system is concerned, the data on response synchronization appear without exception compatible with the hypothesis that neuronal representations of visual objects consist of assemblies of cells or cell groups that are distinguished by the synchrony of their temporally structured responses. During development, this architecture is susceptible to experience dependent modifications. Thus, through epigenetic shaping, the grouping criteria can be adapted to the actual requirements of the environment in which the organism happens to evolve. Grouping criteria may remain modifiable in the mature system but only within the constraints of the architecture of connections. In combination, these mechanisms lead to a network that is able to evaluate relationships between spatially distributed features and to create representations for particular, frequently occurring constellations of features. These representations in turn can be used for scene segmentation because they allow for the grouping that is necessary to assign signals from spatially distributed contours to particular objects, figures, and background. © 1993, Academic Press Inc.