Temporary binding of descriptions in perception (Al Bregman )

Subject: Temporary binding of descriptions in perception
From:    Al Bregman  <bregman(at)HEBB.PSYCH.MCGILL.CA>
Date:    Tue, 20 May 1997 15:35:53 -0400

Thanks to everyone who replied to my message about the implications of
Dick Warren's observations concerning multiple bindings of single concepts
in a description.  However, none of them addressed Dick's major
observation.  How could one "binding" of properties (say the voice at the
left ear) habituate independently of the other binding when it involves
the same word?

Before anybody says that the two bindings differ in the other concepts in
them (e.g., MALE-RIGHT vs. FEMALE-LEFT), you should recall that it is not
these concepts that are becoming habituated independently.  The listener
would continue to hear a male at the right and a female at the left.  What
habituates independently is the shared word at left and right.  If the
shared word were the identical node (or oscillator), how could it
habituate independently at the left and right?

The idea that new tissue could be co-opted for "new" descriptions
involving "old"  concepts was rejected as unrealistic by Christophe von
der Malsburg in his reply, but I am wondering whether there might not
exist uncommitted pools of neurons that could serve this function?  Have
any theories of this sort been developed?

- Al Bregman