Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Table of Contents - 2001 - Volume 24, Issue 04  


Short Communication

Regularities, context, and neural coding: Are universals reflected in the experienced world?

Antonino Raffone a1, Marta Olivetti Belardinelli a2 and Cees van Leeuwen a3
a1 Department of Psychology, University of Sunderland, St. Peter's Campus, SR6 0DD Sunderland, United Kingdom antonino.raffone@sunderland.ac.uk
a2 ECONA-Interuniversity Centre for Research on Cognitive Processing in Natural and Artificial Systems, I 00185 Rome, Italy belarditecona@iol.it
a3 RIKEN BSI, 2-1 Hirosawa, Saitama 351–0198, Japan cees.van-leeuwen@sunderland.ac.uk

Abstract

Barlow's concept of the exploitation of environmental statistical regularities may be more plausibly related to brain mechanisms than Shepard's notion of internalisation. In our view, Barlow endorses a bottom-up approach to neural coding and processing, whereas we suggest that feedback interactions in the visual system, as well as chaotic correlation dynamics in the brain, are crucial in exploiting and assimilating environmental regularities. We also discuss the “conceptual tension” between Shepard's ideas of law internalisation and evolutionary adaptation. [Barlow; Shepard]