Dual Mechanisms for Neural Binding and Segmentation

We propose that the binding and segmentation of visual features is mediated by two complementary mechanisms; a low resolu(cid:173) tion, spatial-based, resource-free process and a high resolution, temporal-based, resource-limited process. In the visual cortex, the former depends upon the orderly topographic organization in stri(cid:173) ate and extrastriate areas while the latter may be related to ob(cid:173) served temporal relationships between neuronal activities . Com(cid:173) puter simulations illustrate the role the two mechanisms play in figure/ ground discrimination, depth-from-occlusion, and the vivid(cid:173) ness of perceptual completion. The "binding problem" is a classic problem in computational neuroscience which considers how neuronal activities are grouped to create mental representations. For the case of visual processing, the binding of neuronal activities requires a mecha(cid:173) nism for selectively grouping fragmented visual features in order to construct the coherent representations (i.e.