On the relation between neural modelling and experimental neuroscience

This paper discusses the relation of theory and experiment in neuroscience exempliied by three assumptions often made in models of coherent activation in the cortex: basic feature-coding oscillators, phase-coding and global binding of whole objects. Apparently these assumptions are not very well supported by the experimental evidence. We propose that it is the single synchronized population-burst that matters: spikes of feature-coding cells are temporally clustered in our opinion by recurrent associative processes. In each burst a single stimulus is processed (if there are several). Synchronization is restricted to cortical sites which physically interact. These principles are illustrated by computer simulations.

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