Cortical Computation: BBS Call for Commentators

[Stevan Harnad]

    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 at 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 at forth.stir.ac.uk

                Max Planck Institute for Brain Research,
                Deutschordenstrasse 46,
                Postfach 71 06 62,
                D-60496 Frankfurt/Main,
                Germany.
                singer at 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.

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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.
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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 at 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 at decwrl.dec.com
       and
bitftp at 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).

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