Cortical Computation: BBS Call for Commentators

Below is the abstract of a forthcoming BBS target article on: IN SEARCH OF COMMON FOUNDATIONS FOR CORTICAL COMPUTATION by W.A. Phillips and W. Singer This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please send EMAIL to: bbs(a)soton.ac.uk or write to: Behavioral and Brain Sciences Department of Psychology University of Southampton Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs.html http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals If you are not a BBS Associate, please send your CV and the name of a BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar with your work. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator. An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection by anonymous ftp (or gopher or world-wide-web) according to the instructions that follow after the abstract. ____________________________________________________________________ IN SEARCH OF COMMON FOUNDATIONS FOR CORTICAL COMPUTATION W.A. Phillips and W. Singer Center for Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience, Departments of Psychology and Computing Science, University of Stirling, FK9 4LA, Scotland, UK. wap1(a)forth.stir.ac.uk Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Deutschordenstrasse 46, Postfach 71 06 62, D-60496 Frankfurt/Main, Germany. singer(a)mpih-frankfurt.mpg.d400.de KEYWORDS: Cell assemblies; cerebral cortex; coordination; context; dynamic binding; functional specialization; learning; neural coding; neural computation; neuropsychology; reading; object recognition; perception; self-organization; synaptic plasticity; synchronization. ABSTRACT: This research concerns forms of coding, processing and learning that are common to many different cortical regions and cognitive functions. Local cortical processors may coordinate their activity by maximizing the transmission of information that is coherently related to the context in which it occurs, thereby forming synchronized population codes. In this coordination, contextual field (CF) connections link processors within and between cortical regions. The effects of CF connections are distinct from those mediating receptive field (RF) input. CFs can guide both learning and processing without becoming confused with RF information. Simulations explore the capabilities of networks built from local processors with both RF and CF connections. Physiological evidence for CFs, synchronization, and plasticity in RF and CF connections is described. Coordination via CFs is related to perceptual grouping, the effects of context on contrast sensitivity, amblyopia, implicit influences of color in achromotopsia, object and word perception, and the discovery of distal environmental variables and their interactions through self-organization. In cortical computation there may occur a flexible evaluation of relations between input signals by locally specialized but adaptive processors whose activity is dynamically associated and coordinated within and between regions through specialized contextual connections. -------------------------------------------------------------- To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable by anonymous ftp from ftp.princeton.edu according to the instructions below (the filename is bbs.phillips). Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article. ------------------------------------------------------------- These files are also on the World Wide Web and the easiest way to retrieve them is with Netscape, Mosaic, gopher, archie, veronica, etc. Here are some of the URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive: http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs.html http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.phillips.html ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.phillips ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/Archive/bbs.phillips gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either: ftp ftp.princeton.edu or ftp 128.112.128.1 When you are asked for your login, type: anonymous Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid: yourlogin(a)yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@") cd /pub/harnad/BBS To show the available files, type: ls Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example): get bbs.phillips When you have the file(s) you want, type: quit ---------- Where the above procedure is not available there are two fileservers: ftpmail(a)decwrl.dec.com and bitftp(a)pucc.bitnet that will do the transfer for you. To one or the other of them, send the following one line message: help for instructions (which will be similar to the above, but will be in the form of a series of lines in an email message that ftpmail or bitftp will then execute for you). -------------------------------------------------------------