ABSTRACT
Sirnultaneous rnultichannel recording frorn the olfactory bulb and cortex has given the following experimental results. l. The cortical activity that relates to the perception of a sensory stimulus is carried macroscopically by populations of neurons, not microscopically by a small number of single neurons ("units", "feature detectors", etc.). 2. That activity reflects the meaning and significance of the stimulus for the experimental subject and not the stimulus as it is known to the observer. 3. The activity carries the meaning in spatial patterns, not in time series (the difference between a phonograph or radio and a movie or TV). 4. The spatial patterns of activity that accompany previously leamed stimuli or responses are changed by the introduction of new stimuli and also by modifications in reinforcement contingencies. 5. The patterns of activity are created by dynamic neural interactions in sensory cortex, not by registration or filtering of stimuli. There is no evidence for storage, retrieval, crosscorrelation, or logical tree search. 6. The dynamics is chaotic, not merely noisy, so that each act of perception involves a new construction by the cortex and not mere information processing. From these findings we infer that chaotic dynamics plays a crucial role in the formation of associational contexts of the memories of experimental subjects, so that intentionality is characteristic of early stages of cortical function, including primary sensory cortexes in lower marnmals.
