Abstract
Perception is a first-person internal sensation induced within the nervous system at the time of arrival of sensory stimuli from objects in the environment. Lack of access to the first-person properties has limited viewing perception as an emergent property and it is currently being studied using third-person observed findings from various levels. One feasible approach to understand its mechanism is to build a hypothesis for the specific conditions and required circuit features of the nodal points where the mechanistic operation of perception take place for one type of sensation in one species and to verify it for the presence of comparable circuit properties for perceiving a different sensation in a different species. The present work explains visual perception in mammalian nervous system from a first-person frame of reference and provides explanations for the homogeneity of perception of visual stimuli above flicker fusion frequency, the perception of objects at locations different from their actual position, the smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movements, the perception of object borders, and perception of pressure phosphenes. Using results from temporal resolution studies and the known details of visual cortical circuitry, explanations are provided for (a) the perception of rapidly changing visual stimuli, (b) how the perception of objects occurs in the correct orientation even though, according to the third-person view, activity from the visual stimulus reaches the cortices in an inverted manner and (c) the functional significance of well-conserved columnar organization of the visual cortex. A comparable circuitry detected in a different nervous system in a remote species—the olfactory circuitry of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster—provides an opportunity to explore circuit functions using genetic manipulations, which, along with high-resolution microscopic techniques and lipid membrane interaction studies, will be able to verify the structure–function details of the presented mechanism of perception.
Highlights
Helmholtz proposed that visual perception is mediated by unconscious inferences using cognitive resources (Helmholtz 1866; Barlow 1990)
Blocking large number of inter-postsynaptic functional inter-postsynaptic functional link (LINK) either in the visual cortex or in the glomerulus is expected to alter the horizontal component of oscillating potentials, which will alter the frequency of oscillating potentials and disrupt visual or olfactory perception respectively
The present framework used third person observations to construct a feasible mechanism for the first-person internal sensation of perception and has explained a large number of findings made at different levels
Summary
Helmholtz proposed that visual perception is mediated by unconscious inferences using cognitive resources (Helmholtz 1866; Barlow 1990). The columnar nature of the visual cortex restricts the number of islets of inter-LINKed postsynapses within them (Fig. 3a) and highly increases the probability that activity from stimuli arriving from infinitesimally close locations from an object will either (a) reactivate existing inter-postsynaptic functional LINKs from both its sides or (b) inter-LINK two abutted postsynaptic terminals by simultaneously activating them to induce semblances at the opposite postsynapses and reverse back rapidly Such a mechanism is essential to explain the homogeneity of percept of the visual stimuli arriving above the flicker fusion frequency. In the context of the present work, it can be seen that the columnar organization brings spatial restriction only at the level of the inputs from the LGN neurons to the abutting postsynaptic terminals at different neuronal layers This is essential for bringing sensory inputs arriving from infinitesimally close locations from an object to activate an inter-postsynaptic functional LINK from both its sides and induce perceptons. This indicates that pressure phosphenes are perceived at a direction opposite to the direction of arrival of pressure
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