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 resolution, 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 striate andextrastriate areas while the latter may be related to observed temporalrelationships between neuronal activities. Computer simulations illustrate the role the two mechanisms play in figure/ ground discrimination, depth-from-occlusion, and the vividness ofperceptual completion. 1 COMPLEMENTARY BINDING MECHANISMS 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 mechanism forselectively grouping fragmented visual features in order to construct the coherent representations (i.e.