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Abstract

The system of cortical pyramidal cells, fairly uniform in shape (and pre­sumably in their functional characteristics), interconnected by a very large number of excitatory synapses, invites speculations as to their mode of operation. We select three ideas which have been proposed: that of a global operation, that of Hebbian cell assemblies as carriers of meaning, and that of sequential order arising in Abelesian “synfire chains”. These ideas are by no means mutually exclusive and may well represent three aspects of a reality too complex to be grasped in its entirety.

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© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Braitenberg, V., Schüz, A. (1998). Global Activity, Cell Assemblies and Synfire Chains. In: Cortex: Statistics and Geometry of Neuronal Connectivity. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03733-1_35

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03733-1_35

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-03735-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-03733-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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