Binding Problem
Definition
Information processing in the human brain is highly parallel. This means that different features of an object are processed in different parts of the brain. For example, the color and the shape of a red square are coded by different neurons in the visual system ( visual field). However, we do not perceive “red” and “square shaped” separately but a “red square.” The binding problem deals with the question of how features that are processed in parallel are bound to the one unique percept.
The term “binding problem” usually refers to the binding of features such as color and shape in contrast to, for example, binding the visual experience of one square to general concepts about squares such as equiangularity. Feature binding is often implicitly thought to occur in an epoch of 50–200 ms.
Characteristics
Information Processing
A picture is presented. Recognizing an object in this picture cannot simply be accomplished by comparing this object with some mental “images” stored in...
Notes
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Andreas Kreiter, Joseph Krummenacher, Thomas Otto, and Maximilian Riesenhuber for helpful comments.
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