Linking the laminar circuits of visual cortex to visual perception: Development, grouping, and attention

Author(s): Grossberg, S. |

Year: 2001

Citation: Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 25 , 513-526

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.

Topics: Biological Vision, Models: Other,

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