How does the cerebral cortex work? Learning, attention, and grouping by the laminar circuits of visual cortex
Year: 1999
Type: article
Abstract: The organization of neocortex into layers is one of its most salient anatomical features. These layers include circuits that form functional columns in cortical maps. A major unsolved problem concerns how bottom-up, top-down, and horizontal interactions are organized within cortical layers to generate adaptive behaviors. This article models how these interactions help visual cortex to realize: (i) the binding process whereby cortex groups distributed data into coherent object representations; (ii) the attentional process whereby cortex selectively processes important events; and (iii) the developmental and learning processes whereby cortex shapes its circuits to match environmental constraints. New computational ideas about feedback systems suggest how neocortex develops and learns in a stable way, and why top-down attention requires converging bottom-up inputs to fully activate cortical cells, whereas perceptual groupings do not.
Source: Spatial Vision
Author: Stephen Grossberg
Institution: Boston University
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1992778926