Dynamic Coordination in Brain and Mind

Abstract

Our goal here is to clarify the concept of "dynamic coordination", and to note major issues that it raises for the cognitive neurosciences. In general, coordinating interactions are those that produce coherent and relevant overall patterns of activity, while preserving the essential individual identities and functions of the activities coordinated. "Dynamic coordination" is the coordination that is created on a moment-by-moment basis so as to deal effectively with unpredictable aspects of the current situation. We distinguish different computational goals for dynamic coordination, and outline issues that arise concerning local cortical circuits, brain systems, cognition, and evolution. Our focus here is on dynamic coordination by widely distributed processes of self-organisation, but we also discuss the role of central executive processes.2

On the functions, mechanisms, and malfunctions of intracortical contextual modulation

“…Singer, 1999;Shadlen and Movshon, 1999;Uhlhaas, et al, 2009;von der Malsburg, Phillips and Singer, 2010;Vinck, Womelsdorf and Fries, 2013). There is also evidence for other grouping strategies, however.…”

“…Gamma rhythms have been observed in many different species, and their synchronization within and across local neuronal groups has been observed both within and between many different brain regions (Fries, Nikolic and Singer, 2007;Vinck, Womelsdorf and Fries, 2013;von der Malsburg, Phillips and Singer, 2010). Gamma-band synchronization is stronger for salient stimuli, and increases with perceptual grouping and spatial integrity (Fries et al, 2001a;Lima et al, 2010;Zhou, Bernard and Bonds, 2008).…”

“…It has been implicated in a wide variety of psychological functions (e.g. Lamme, 2004;Fries, Nikolic and Singer, 2007;von der Malsburg, Phillips and Singer, 2010). Here we summarize the evidence for some of them including: contextual disambiguation; surround suppression and normalization in perception; Gestalt grouping; selective attention; sensory-motor coordination; the dynamic creation of transient assemblies in working memory; cognitive control; and the selective formation of longer-term memories.…”

“…Clowes showed formally how local ambiguity can be reduced by using compatibility constraints to select interpretations of local features so that they form a coherent whole. For further discussion of the relevance of Clowes' computational studies of contextual constraints to contextual modulation see Phillips, von der Malsburg and Singer (2010). For a state-of-the-art example of a computer vision system that uses contextual disambiguation for natural scene interpretation see Rasiwasia and Vasconcelos (2012).…”

Distributed Computation using Evolutionary Consciousness : An Approach

“…3. The coordination and consensus in local regions in brain are established through burst synchronization with theta frequency [43]. However, the coherence at global cortical level is achieved due to lateral inhibition.…”