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Three comments on Teller’s “bridge locus”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2013

J. ANTHONY MOVSHON*
Affiliation:
Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, New York
*
*Address correspondence to: J. Anthony Movshon, Center for Neural Science, New York University, 4 Washington Place, Room 809, New York, NY 10003. E-mail: movshon@nyu.edu

Abstract

The notion of a set of neurons that form a “bridge locus” serving as the immediate substrate of visual perception is examined in the light of evidence on the architecture of the visual pathway, of current thinking about perceptual representations, and of the basis of perceptual awareness. The bridge locus is likely to be part of a tangled web of representations, and this complexity raises the question of whether another scheme that relies less on geography might offer a better framework. The bridge locus bears a close relationship to the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC), and like the NCC may be a concept which is no longer precise enough to provide a useful basis for reasoning about the relationship between brain activity and perceptual experience.

Type
Retrospective and prospective analyses of linking propositions
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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