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Cortical Function: A Tentative Theory and Preliminary Tests

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Neural Mechanisms in Behavior

Abstract

In this paper I am going to pose the question “What does the cortex, and especially visual cortex, do?” The problem is more puzzling than many people realize, and it is especially tantalizing not to be able to answer it in spite of the fact that many laboratories throughout the world routinely record from single cortical neurons. As a tentative answer the hypothesis is advanced here that the sensory cortex does not simply represent sensory information but extracts knowledge from it; this requires the application of statistical tests to the activities of associations of neurons in order to sift out the reliable signals in the representation. Finally, I shall describe some psychophysical measurements we have made of how well, in absolute terms, such decisions are made and shall suggest tentative neural mechanisms.

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Authors
  1. Horace B. Barlow
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712, USA

    Dennis McFadden

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© 1980 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

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Barlow, H.B. (1980). Cortical Function: A Tentative Theory and Preliminary Tests. In: McFadden, D. (eds) Neural Mechanisms in Behavior. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-6063-9_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-6063-9_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-6065-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-6063-9

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