Moshe Gur
Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology

On the unity of perception: How does the brain integrate activity evoked at different cortical loci?

Tuesday 27th of September 2011 at 12:00pm
508-20 Evans

Any physical device we know, including computers, when comparing A to B must send the information to point C. I have done experiments in three modalities, somato-sensory, auditory, and visual, where 2 different loci at the primary cortex are stimulated and I argue that the "machine" converging hypothesis cannot explain the perceptual results. Thus we must assume a non-converging mechanism whereby the brain, at times, can compare (integrate, process) events that take place at different loci without sending the information to a common target. Once we allow for such a mechanism, many phenomena can be viewed differently. Take for example the question of how and where does multi-sensory integration take place; we perceive a synchronized talking face yet detailed visual and auditory information are represented at very different brain loci.
(video)

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