Cortical synchronization as a neural basis for visual perception

Cortical synchronization has been suggested as a neural mechanism that is able to solve the feature binding problem. This idea has been intensively studied at neurophysiological, psychophysical and computational level. In this paper, arguments for and against the role of cortical synchronization in visual perception are critically examined. Initial neurophysiological findings of correlated neural activity in the primary visual cortex have been questioned by studies which reveal enhanced firing rate to the figure region compared to the background. Computational investigations reveal that synchronization has capacity limit. At the behavioural level, change blindness has been used as the evidence for capacity limit of visual perception. However, further examination of this issue showed that detailed visual representation exists but it is obscured by limitation of attention and visual working memory. Other behavioural phenomena, such as perceptual asynchrony, also point to the fact that there is dissociation between correlated neural activity and perception. Therefore, at present there is no sufficient evidence to support the conclusion that cortical synchronization plays a crucial role in visual perception