Human agents draw a variety of inferences effortlessly, spontaneously, and with remarkable efficiency – as though these inferences were a reflexive response of their cognitive apparatus. Furthermore, these inferences are drawn with reference to a large body of background knowledge. This remarkable human ability seems paradoxical given the complexity of reasoning reported by researchers in artificial intelligence. It also poses a challenge for cognitive science and computational neuroscience: How can a system of simple and slow neuronlike elements represent a large (...) body of systemic knowledge and perform a range of inferences with such speed? We describe a computational model that takes a step toward addressing the cognitive science challenge and resolving the artificial intelligence paradox. We show how a connectionist network can encode millions of facts and rules involving n-ary predicates and variables and perform a class of inferences in a few hundred milliseconds. Efficient reasoning requires the rapid representation and propagation of dynamic bindings. Our model (which we refer to as SHRUTI) achieves this by representing (1) dynamic bindings as the synchronous firing of appropriate nodes, (2) rules as interconnection patterns that direct the propagation of rhythmic activity, and (3) long-term facts as temporal pattern-matching subnetworks. The model is consistent with recent neurophysiological evidence that synchronous activity occurs in the brain and may play a representational role in neural information processing. The model also makes specific psychologically significant predictions about the nature of reflexive reasoning. It identifies constraints on the form of rules that may participate in such reasoning and relates the capacity of the working memory underlying reflexive reasoning to biological parameters such as the lowest frequency at which nodes can sustain synchronous oscillations and the coarseness of synchronization. (shrink)

Lange & Dyer misunderstand what is meant by an “entity” and confuse a medium of representation with the content being represented. This leads them to the erroneous conclusion that SHRUTI will run out of phases and that its representation of bindings lacks semantic content. It is argued that the limit on the number of phases suffices, and SHRUTI can be interpreted as using “dynamic signatures” that offer significant advantages over fixed preexisting signatures. Bonatti refers to three levels of commitment to (...) a representational theory of the mind and states that SHRUTI is committed to RTM at levels 1 and 2. He acknowledges that SHRUTI is not committed at level 3, but argues that an extended SHRUTI would have to make such a commitment. We agree that SHRUTI is committed to RTM at level 1 and, in a sense, also at level 2. SHRUTI, however, is not committed to RTM at level 3 and, even though it has been extended in several ways, it has retained its original representational character. (shrink)

Theories of binding have recently come into the focus of the consciousness debate. In this review, we discuss the potential relevance of temporal binding mechanisms for sensory awareness. Specifically, we suggest that neural synchrony with a precision in the millisecond range may be crucial for conscious processing, and may be involved in arousal, perceptual integration, attentional selection and working memory. Recent evidence from both animal and human studies demonstrates that specific changes in neuronal synchrony occur (...) during all of these processes and that they are distinguished by the emergence of fast oscillations with frequencies in the gamma-range. (shrink)

This paper is a commentary on the target article by Lokendra Shastri & Venkat Ajjanagadde [S&A]: “From simple associations to systematic reasoning: A connectionist representation of rules, variables and dynamic bindings using temporal synchrony” in same issue of the journal, pp.417–451. -/- It puts S&A's temporal-synchrony binding method in a broader context, comments on notions of pointing and other ways of associating information - in both computers and connectionist systems - and mentions types of reasoning (...) that are a challenge to S&A's system (amongst many other connectionist systems, recognizing that S&A's is much more capable as regards reasoning than most other contemporary systems). (shrink)

Processing the various features from different feature maps and modalities in coherent ways requires a dedicated integration mechanism . Many authors have related feature binding to conscious awareness but little is known about how tight this relationship really is. We presented subjects with asynchronous audiovisual stimuli and tested whether the two features were integrated. The results show that binding took place up to 350 ms feature-onset asynchronies, suggesting that integration covers a relatively wide temporal window. We also (...) asked subjects to explicitly judge whether the two features would belong to the same or to the different events. Unsurprisingly, synchrony judgments decreased with increasing asynchrony. Most importantly, feature binding was entirely unaffected by conscious experience: features were bound whether they were experienced as occurring together or as belonging to a separate events, suggesting that the conscious experience of unity is not a prerequisite for, or a direct consequence of binding. (shrink)

This article traces the significant links that Virilio's dromological analysis posits between the social and political impact of mechanical vehicles and communications media. Focusing on the way that the 'revolutions' of transportation and transmission have fundamentally altered contemporary experiences of space and time, the article explores the implications of Virilio s concept of spatio-temporal 'overexposure". My contention is that Virilio's work has been of critical importance in placing questions about differential spatio-temporal regimes Oin the political agenda. However, his (...) critique of 'tele-presence. is ultimately hampered by his continued attachment to a phenomenological subject, which I argue does not provide an adequate basis from which to rethink the dominant social relations of time and space manifest in the contemporary media. (shrink)

Contrary to the assertions made in the target article, temporal synchrony, coupled with an appropriate choice of representational primitives, leads to a functionally adequate and neurally plausible architecture that addresses the massiveness of the binding problem, the problem of 2, the problem of variables, and the transformation of activity-based transient representations of events and situations into structure-based persistent encodings of the same.

Shastri & Ajjanagadde argue convincingly that both structured connectionist networks and parallel dynamic inferencing are necessary for reflexive reasoning - a kind of inferencing and reasoning that occurs rapidly, spontaneously, and without conscious effort, and which seems necessary for everyday tasks such as natural language understanding. As S&A describe, reflexive reasoning requires a solution to thedynamic binding problem, that is, how to encode systematic and abstract knowledge and instantiate it in specific situations to draw appropriate inferences. Although symbolic artificial (...) intelligence systems trivially solve the dynamic binding problem using computers' registers and pointers, it has remained a difficult problem for connectionist systems. S&A's temporal synchrony solution to the dynamic binding problem using synchronous firing of argument units and the entities that are bound to them illustrates one way in which connectionist networks can do thisusing a constrained but important class of long-term knowledge rules. Their structured connectionist solution allows dynamic inferencing to proceed in parallel and therefore has a number of advantages for reflexive reasoning over most other connectionist and symbolic systems. (shrink)

Tsuda's article suggests several plausible concepts of neurodynamic representation and processing, with a thoughtful discussion of their neurobiological grounding and formal properties. However, Tsuda's theory leads to a holistic view of brain functions and to the controversial conclusion that the “binding problem” is a pseudo-problem. By contrast, we stress the role of chaotic patterns in solving the binding problem, in terms of flexible temporal coding of visual scenes through graded and intermittent synchrony.

In temporal binding, the temporal interval between one event and another, occurring some time later, is subjectively compressed. We discuss two ways in which temporal binding has been conceptualized. In studies showing temporal binding between a voluntary action and its causal consequences, such binding is typically interpreted as providing a measure of an implicit or pre-reflective “sense of agency”. However, temporal binding has also been observed in contexts not involving voluntary (...) action, but only the passive observation of a cause-effect sequence. In those contexts, it has been interpreted as a top-down effect on perception reflecting a belief in causality. These two views need not be in conflict with one another, if one thinks of them as concerning two separate mechanisms through which temporal binding can occur. In this paper, we explore an alternative possibility: that there is a unitary way of explaining temporal binding both within and outside the context of voluntary action as a top-down effect on perception reflecting a belief in causality. Any such explanation needs to account for ways in which agency, and factors connected with agency, have been shown to affect the strength of temporal binding. We show that principles of causal inference and causal selection already familiar from the literature on causal learning have the potential to explain why the strength of people’s causal beliefs can be affected by the extent to which they are themselves actively involved in bringing about events, thus in turn affecting binding. (shrink)

It has consistently been shown that agents judge the intervals between their actions and outcomes as compressed in time, an effect named intentional binding. In the present work, we investigated whether this effect is result of prior bias volunteers have about the timing of the consequences of their actions, or if it is due to learning that occurs during the experimental session. Volunteers made temporal estimates of the interval between their action and target onset , or between two (...) events . Our results show that temporal estimates become shorter throughout each experimental block in both conditions. Moreover, we found that observers judged intervals between action and outcomes as shorter even in very early trials of each block. To quantify the decrease of temporal judgments in experimental blocks, exponential functions were fitted to participants’ temporal judgments. The fitted parameters suggest that observers had different prior biases as to intervals between events in which action was involved. These findings suggest that prior bias might play a more important role in this effect than calibration-type learning processes. (shrink)

Temporal binding is the phenomenon in which events related as cause and effect are perceived by humans to be closer in time than they actually are). Despite the fact that temporal binding experiments with humans have relied on verbal instructions, we argue that they are adaptable to nonhuman animals, and that a finding of temporal binding from such experiments would provide evidence of causal reasoning that cannot be reduced to associative learning. Our argument depends (...) on describing and theoretically motivating an intermediate level of representations between the lower levels of associations of sensory features and higher symbolic representations. This intermediate level of representations makes it possible to challenge arguments given by some comparative psychologists that animals lack higher-level abstract and explicit forms of causal reasoning because their cognitive capacities are limited to learning and reasoning at the basic level of perceptual associations. Our multi-level account connects time perception with causal reasoning and provides a philosophically defensible framework for experimental investigations that have not yet been pursued. We describe the structure of some possible experiments and consider the implications that would follow from a positive finding of temporal binding in nonhuman animals. Such a finding would provide evidence of explicit awareness of causal relationships and would warrant attribution of intermediate representations that are more abstract and sophisticated than the associations allowed by the lower level of the two-level account. (shrink)

Cognitive functions like perception, memory, language, or consciousness are based on highly parallel and distributed information processing by the brain. One of the major unresolved questions is how information can be integrated and how coherent representational states can be established in the distributed neuronal systems subserving these functions. It has been suggested that this so-called ''binding problem'' may be solved in the temporal domain. The hypothesis is that synchronization of neuronal discharges can serve for the integration of distributed (...) neurons into cell assemblies and that this process may underlie the selection of perceptually and behaviorally relevant information. As we intend to show here, this temporal binding hypothesis has implications for the search of the neural correlate of consciousness. We review experimental results, mainly obtained in the visual system, which support the notion of temporal binding. In particular, we discuss recent experiments on the neural mechanisms of binocular rivalry which suggest that appropriate synchronization among cortical neurons may be one of the necessary conditions for the buildup of perceptual states and awareness of sensory stimuli. (shrink)

Our senses receive a manifold of sensory signals at any given moment in our daily lives. For a coherent and unified representation of information and precise motor control, our brain needs to temporally bind the signals emanating from a common causal event and segregate others. Traditionally, different mechanisms were proposed for the temporal binding phenomenon in multisensory and motor-sensory contexts. This paper reviews the literature on the temporal binding phenomenon in both multisensory and motor-sensory contexts and (...) suggests future research directions for advancing the field. Moreover, by critically evaluating the recent literature, this paper suggests that common computational principles are responsible for the temporal binding in multisensory and motor-sensory contexts. These computational principles are grounded in the Bayesian framework of uncertainty reduction rooted in the Helmholtzian idea of unconscious causal inference. (shrink)

Temporal binding refers to a phenomenon whereby the time interval between a cause and its effect is perceived as shorter than the same interval separating two unrelated events. We examined the developmental profile of this phenomenon by comparing the performance of groups of children (aged 6-7-, 7-8-, and 9-10- years) and adults on a novel interval estimation task. In Experiment 1, participants made judgments about the time interval between i) their button press and a rocket launch, and ii) (...) a non-causal predictive signal and rocket launch. In Experiment 2, an additional causal condition was included in which participants made judgments about the interval between an experimenter’s button press and the launch of a rocket. Temporal binding was demonstrated consistently and did not change in magnitude with age: estimates of delay were shorter in causal contexts for both adults and children. Additionally, the magnitude of the binding effect was greater when participants themselves were the cause of an outcome compared to when they were mere spectators. This suggests that although causality underlies the binding effect, intentional action may modulate its magnitude. Again, this was true of both adults and children. Taken together, these results are the first to suggest that the binding effect is present and developmentally constant from childhood into adulthood. (shrink)

In his preface to Human, Too Human Nietzsche wrote: ‘My books have been labelled the school of suspicion … ‘ Predicted and desired by Nietzsche, the age of suspicion does seem to be one of the labels that best characterize the century that has just closed. And symptomatically it was used a few decades later in France to describe writers’ interrogations about the novel as a literary genre, its facilities and conventions, its easy determinisms, as well as the exorbitant power (...) of the novelist-demiurge. Is it necessary to recall that the forerunner to the nouveau roman, written by Nathalie Sarraute in the 1930s, was in fact entitled L’Ère du soupçon? It is impossible to emphasize enough this close concordance between philosophical questioning and aesthetic interrogations, particularly in the notion of avant-garde, which is indispensable for thinking about intellectual and political renewal. It is true that the 20th century was the century of the universal declaration of human rights, but also the century of rejection of norms inherited from philosophical, literary, cultural, religious or scientific traditions, which came to be suspected of providing only off-the-peg elements for thought and action at a time when the world was changing and required new forms of thinking. (shrink)

In his preface to Human, Too Human Nietzsche wrote: ‘My books have been labelled the school of suspicion … ‘ Predicted and desired by Nietzsche, the age of suspicion does seem to be one of the labels that best characterize the century that has just closed. And symptomatically it was used a few decades later in France to describe writers’ interrogations about the novel as a literary genre, its facilities and conventions, its easy determinisms, as well as the exorbitant power (...) of the novelist-demiurge. Is it necessary to recall that the forerunner to the nouveau roman, written by Nathalie Sarraute in the 1930s, was in fact entitled L’Ère du soupçon? It is impossible to emphasize enough this close concordance between philosophical questioning and aesthetic interrogations, particularly in the notion of avant-garde, which is indispensable for thinking about intellectual and political renewal. It is true that the 20th century was the century of the universal declaration of human rights, but also the century of rejection of norms inherited from philosophical, literary, cultural, religious or scientific traditions, which came to be suspected of providing only off-the-peg elements for thought and action at a time when the world was changing and required new forms of thinking. (shrink)

It is well established that the temporal proximity of two events is a fundamental cue to causality. Recent research with adults has shown that this relation is bidirectional: events that are believed to be causally related are perceived as occurring closer together in time—the so‐called temporal binding effect. Here, we examined the developmental origins of temporal binding. Participants predicted when an event that was either caused by a button press, or preceded by a non‐causal signal, (...) would occur. We demonstrate for the first time that children as young as 4 years are susceptible to temporal binding. Binding occurred both when the button press was executed via intentional action, and when a machine caused it. These results suggest binding is a fundamental, early developing property of perception and grounded in causal knowledge. (shrink)

Recently, it has been shown that the perceived times of voluntary movements and their effects are perceived as shifted towards each other. This temporal binding phenomenon was explained by an integrated representation of movement and effect, facilitating operant learning and the experience of intentionality. Here, we investigated whether temporal binding depends on explicit intentional attributions. In Experiment 1, participants intended to either produce or avoid producing an effect by the timing of their movements, with the ratio (...) of success being fixed at 2:1. In Experiments 2 and 3, the influence of the action–effect contingency ratio on temporal binding was controlled for by removing the intentional attribution of the effect. The results indicate that temporal binding is a general associative mechanism that facilitates the learning of movement–effect contingencies. Beyond that, temporal binding is sensitive to explicit intentional attributions, which selectively enhance the link between an intentional movement and the effect a moving agent intends to produce. (shrink)

Industry 4.0 The present work enables us to take the first steps in the world of the 4th Industrial Revolution, a world where robots, artificial intelligence and digital manufacturing technologies will change forever the way we design, produce and buy products and services. The first characteristics of this revolution is globalization: for the first time in history, an industrial transformation is taking place simultaneously on a global scale. The second key-factor is the word ecosystem: unlike the first three industrial revolutions (...) (steam engine, electricity and computers) over the past few years, no technologies nor machines were invented anew, but we understood how to keep together different technological platforms by using the same language (bit). If the revolution in place will complete the transformations announced, in twenty years we will look at today’s society the same way we nowadays look at the 19th Century society. (shrink)

The retrospective view of temporal binding (TB), the temporal contraction between one's actions and their effects, proposes that TB is influenced by what happens after the action. However, the role of the interaction between multiple sources of information following the action in the formation of TB has received limited attention. The current study aims to address this gap by investigating the combined influence of social feedback and outcome valence (i.e., positive or negative outcomes) on TB. In Experiment (...) 1, the valenced outcome was followed by either positive or negative social feedback. The results showed that negative social feedback enlarged the difference between TB over negative and positive outcomes relative to positive social feedback. The modulatory effect of social feedback on TB was not observed in the absence of causal beliefs between actions and outcomes (Experiment 2). These results highlight the importance of considering the complex interplay between cognitive, emotional, and social factors in shaping our subjective temporal experience. (shrink)

Research on the neuronal correlates of consciousness faces the problem that the explanandum is ill defined. An attempt is made to constrain the problem by contrasting conscious with non‐conscious processing modes. Evidence is reviewed that favors the notion that conscious processing is associated with a dynamical state that permits binding of widely distributed computational results by establishing large scale temporal coherence. It is proposed that the coexistence of conscious and non‐conscious processing modes is a general feature of mammalian (...) brains that is amenable to neurobiological exploration. By contrast it is argued that the phase transition between neuronal processes and the qualia experienced from the first person perspective defies purely neuroscientific reductionism because qualia have the ontological status of social realities. Hence, they can only be accounted for by including in addition the social interactions of agents endowed with the cognitive functions of humans. (shrink)

The conclusions drawn by Benjamin Libet from his work with collegues on the timing of somatosensorial conscious experiences has met with a lot of praise and criticism. In this issue we find three examples of the latter. Here I attempt to place the divide between the two opponent camps in a broader perspective by analyzing the question of the relation between physical timing, neural timing, and experiential timing. The nervous system does a sophisticated job of recombining and recoding messages from (...) the sensorial surfaces and if these processes are slighted in a theory, it might become necessary to postulate weird operations, including subjective back-referral. Neuroscientifically inspired theories are of necessity still based on guesses, extrapolations, and philosophically dubious manners of speech. They often assume some neural correlate of consciousness as a part of the nervous system that transforms neural activity in reportable experiences. The majority of neuroscientists appear to assume that the NCC can compare and bind activity patterns only if they arrive simultaneously at the NCC. This leads to a search for synchrony or to theories in terms of the compensation of differences in neural delays . This is the main dimension of the Libet discussion. Examples from vision research, such as “temporal-binding-by-synchrony” and the “flash-lag” effect, are then used to illustrate these reasoning patterns in more detail. Alternatively one could assume symbolic representations of time and space that are not coded in their own dimension . Unless such tags are multiplexed with the quality message , one gets a binding problem for tags. One of the hidden aspects of the discussion between Libet and opponents appears to be the following. Is the NCC smarter than the rest of the nervous system, so that it can solve the problems of local sign and timing on its own, or are these pieces of information coded symbolically early on in the system? A supersmart NCC appears to be the assumption of Libet's camp . The wish to distribute the smartness evenly across all stages of processing in the nervous system appears to motivate the opponents. I argue that there are reasons to side with the latter group. (shrink)

Emotionally arousing events may disrupt the ability to bind together different features of items to their context; this holds true both for spatial binding and temporal binding. Nonetheless, memory for emotional events may be enhanced in certain situations. A key factor that might explain the memory–emotion relation is represented by individual differences in cognition. The present study investigated temporal binding for neutral and negative events in a group of 50 undergraduate students, focusing on the role (...) of individual differences in working memory. Temporal binding was assessed with sorting accuracy of various pictorial scripted events, 24 h after encoding. Results showed that higher backward digit span predicted higher binding accuracy; importantly, this was qualified by the interaction with valence, such that higher backward digit span predicted better performance for negative, but not neutral, events. It is concluded that working memory facilitates binding of emotional events to their temporal context during encoding, creating a strong representation, and favouring later retrieval of such bound representations. (shrink)

The basic elements of faceted thesauri are described, together with a review of their origins and some prominent examples. Their use in browsing and searching applications is discussed. Faceted thesauri are distinguished from faceted classification schemes, while acknowledging the close similarities. The paper concludes by comparing faceted thesauri and related knowledge organization systems to ontologies and discussing appropriate areas of use.

Heterochronic genes control the timing of developmental programs. In C. elegans, two key genes in the heterochronic pathway, lin-4 and let-7, encode small temporally expressed RNAs (stRNAs) that are not translated into protein. These stRNAs exert negative post-transcriptional regulation by binding to complementary sequences in the 3′ untranslated regions of their target genes. stRNAs are transcribed as longer precursor RNAs that are processed by the RNase Dicer/DCR-1 and members of the RDE-1/AGO1 family of proteins, which are better known for (...) their roles in RNA interference (RNAi). However, stRNA function appears unrelated to RNAi. Both sequence and temporal regulation of let-7 stRNA is conserved in other animal species suggesting that this is an evolutionarily ancient gene. Indeed, C. elegans, Drosophila and humans encode at least 86 other RNAs with similar structural features to lin-4 and let-7. We postulate that other small non-coding RNAs may function as stRNAs to control temporal identity during development in C. elegans and other organisms. BioEssays 24:119–129, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

_dualism_ (consciousness lies outside knowable science), _emergence_ (consciousness arises as a novel property from complex computational dynamics in the brain), and some form of _panpsychism_, _pan-protopsychism, or pan-experientialism_ (essential features or precursors of consciousness are fundamental components of reality which are accessed by brain processes). In addition to 1) the problem of subjective experience, other related enigmatic features of consciousness persist, defying technological and philosophical inroads. These include 2) the “binding problem”—how disparate brain activities give rise to a unified (...) sense of “self” or unified conscious content. Temporal synchrony—brain-wide coherence of neural membrane electrical activities—is often assumed to accomplish binding, but _what_ is being synchronized? What is being coherently bound? Another enigmatic feature is 3) the transition from pre-conscious processes to consciousness itself. Most neuroscientists agree that consciousness is the “tip of an iceberg”, that the vast majority of brain activities is. (shrink)

Recent findings in neuroscience strongly suggest that an object’s features (e.g., its color, texture, shape, etc.) are represented in separate areas of the visual cortex. Although represented in separate neuronal areas, somehow the feature representations are brought together as a single, unified object of visual consciousness. This raises a question of binding: how do neural activities in separate areas of the visual cortex function to produce a feature-unified object of visual consciousness? Several prominent neuroscientists have adopted neural synchrony (...) and attention-based approaches to explain object feature binding. I argue that although neural synchrony and attentional mechanisms might function to disambiguate an object’s features, it is difficult to see how either of these mechanisms could fully explain the unity of an object’s features at the level of visual consciousness. After presenting a detailed critique of neural synchrony and attention-based approaches to object feature binding, I propose interactive hierarchical structuralism (IHS). This view suggests that a unified percept (i.e., a feature-unified object of visual consciousness) is not reducible to the activity of any cognitive capacity or to any localized neural area, but emerges out of the interaction of visual information organized by spatial structuring capacities correlated with lower, higher, and intermediate levels of the visual hierarchy. After clarifying different notions of emergence and elaborating evidence for IHS, I discuss how IHS can be tested through transcranial magnetic stimulation and backward masking. In the final section I present some further implications and advantages of IHS. (shrink)

How do separate brain processes bind to form unified, conscious percepts? This is the perceptual binding problem, which straddles neuroscience and psychology. In fact, two problems exist here: (1) the easy problem of how neural processes are unified, and (2) the hard problem of how this yields unified perceptual consciousness. Binding theories face familiar troubles with (1) and they do not come to grips with (2). This paper argues that neuroelectrical (electromagnetic-field) approaches may help with both problems. Concerning (...) the easy problem, standard accounts of neural binding by synchrony, attention, and convergence raise serious difficulties. These are avoided by neuroelectrical approaches in which the brain’s field binds distributed processes in myriad neurons. Concerning the hard problem, binding theories do not squarely address how to get from neural unity to unified consciousness. This raises metaphysical difficulties involving reductions, emergence, etc. Neuroelectrical (and Russellian) approaches may help avoid these difficulties too. These approaches may thus deserve further investigation as binding theories. (shrink)

It is nearly 10 years since Patrick Haggard and colleagues first reported the ‘intentional binding’ effect . The intentional binding effect refers to the subjective compression of the temporal interval between a voluntary action and its external sensory consequence. Since the first report, considerable interest has been generated and a fascinating array of studies has accumulated. Much of the interest in intentional binding comes from the promise to shed light on human agency. In this review we (...) survey studies on intentional binding, focusing, in particular, on the link between intentional binding and the sense of agency . We suggest that, whilst it is yet to be fully explicated, the link between intentional binding and the sense of agency is compelling. We conclude by considering outstanding questions and future directions for research on intentional binding. (shrink)

I show to be unsuccessful several attempts to demonstrate the possibility of time without change. Consideration of the most prominent of these arguments (by Sydney Shoemaker) then leads to the formulation of a general argument: evidence which justifies a claim that a certain amount of time has elapsed also justifies a claim that continuous change has occurred during the period. Hence there is a sound basis for the relationist claim that there is no time without events.

Temporal binding via 40-Hz synchronization of neuronal discharges in sensory cortices has been hypothesized to be a necessary condition for the rapid selection of perceptually relevant information for further processing in working memory. Binocular rivalry experiments have shown that late stage visual processing associated with the recognition of a stimulus object is highly correlated with discharge rates in inferotemporal cortex. The hippocampus is the primary recipient of inferotemporal outputs and is known to be the substrate for the consolidation (...) of working memories to long-term, episodic memories. The prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, is widely thought to mediate working memory processes, per se. This article reviews accumulated evidence for the role of a subcortical matrix in linking frontal and hippocampal systems to select and ''stream'' conscious episodes across time (hundreds of milliseconds to several seconds). ''Streaming'' is hypothesized to be mediated by the selective gating of reentrant flows of information between these cortical systems and the subcortical matrix. The physiological mechanism proposed for this temporally extended form of binding is synchronous oscillations in the slower EEG spectrum (< 8 Hz). (shrink)

We discuss the role of synchrony of activationin higher-level cognitive processes. Inparticular, we analyze the question of whethersynchrony of activation provides a mechanismfor compositional representation in neuralsystems. We will argue that synchrony ofactivation does not provide a mechanism forcompositional representation in neural systems.At face value, one can identify a level ofcompositional representation in the models thatintroduce synchrony of activation for thispurpose. But behavior in these models isalways produced by means conjunctiverepresentations in the form of coincidencedetectors. Therefore, models (...) that rely onsynchrony of activation lack the systematicityand productivity of true compositional systems.As a result, they cannot distinguish betweentype and token representations, which resultsin misrepresentations of spatial relations andpropositions. Furthermore, higher-levelcognitive processes will likely integrateinformation from widely distributed areas inthe brain, which puts severe restrictions onthe underlying neural dynamics if synchrony ofactivation is to play a role in theseprocesses. We will briefly discuss theserestrictions in the case of feature binding invisual cognition. (shrink)

Most readings of Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling take its account of the Abraham and Isaac story to imply fairly obviously that duty towards God is absolutely distinct from, and therefore capable of superseding, duty towards neighbor or son. This paper will argue, however, that the Akedah, or ‘binding’ of Isaac, as Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Johannes de Silentio, depicts it, binds Abraham to Isaac in a revitalized neighbor relation that is not at all subordinate, in any simple way, to Abraham’s God-relation. (...) The two relations are defined by an intimate mutual tension, a dynamic of passionate inwardness that responds to the immediate demands of the neighbor as fully as the ethics that Levinas notoriously accuses Kierkegaard of having ignored. It is also the dynamic of time consciousness, which for Levinas is fundamentally ethical. I show that Kierkegaardian faith can be viewed as the dynamic of time-consciousness transformed by passionate inwardness into one’s God-relation—that is, converted into a certain religious mode of life. The ethics corresponding to this—an ethics of neighbor love superseding the ‘social morality’ that Silentio, following Hegel, calls the ‘ethical’—would then be the same dynamic of time-consciousness transformed by passionate inwardness into one’s neighbor-relation. The key to the argument is seeing the need to substitute for the spatial dichotomy ‘interior/exterior,’ which results in so much trouble when comparing Levinas and Kierkegaard, the temporal contraries ‘giving up’ and ‘getting back.’. (shrink)

Despite the salient experience of encoding threatening events, these memories are prone to distortions and often non-veridical from encoding to recall. Further, threat has been shown to preferentially disrupt the binding of event details and enhance goal-relevant information. While extensive work has characterised distinctive features of emotional memory, research has not fully explored the influence threat has on temporal memory, a process putatively supported by the binding of event details into a temporal context. Two primary competing (...) hypotheses have been proposed; that threat can impair or enhance temporal memory. We analysed two datasets to assess temporal memory for an in-person haunted house experience. In study 1, we examined the temporal structure of memory by characterising memory contiguity in free recall as a function of individual levels of heart rate as a proxy of threat. In study 2, we replicated marginal findings of threat-related increases in memory contiguity found in study 1. We extended these findings by showing threat-related increases in recency discriminations, an explicit test of temporal memory. Together, these findings demonstrate that threat enhances temporal memory regarding free recall structure and during explicit memory judgments. (shrink)

Nexuses such as exemplification are the fundamental ties that structure reality as a whole. They are “formal” in the sense of constituting the form, not the matter of reality and they are “transcendental” inasmuch as they transcend the categorial distinctions between the denizens of reality, including that between existents and non-existents. I shall advocate a moderately particularist view about (external) nexuses and argue that it provides not only the best solution to Bradley’s regress, but also an elegant account of symmetrical (...) relations (both formal and material), as well as of temporal and modal change. These advantages are illustrated by the reconstruction of an Aristotelian ontology of exemplification involving substances, kinds and material attributes. (shrink)

Currently, anomalous lived temporality is not included in the main diagnostic criteria or standard symptom checklists. In this article, we present the Transdiagnostic Assessment of Temporal Experience, a structured interview that can be used by researchers and clinicians without a comprehensive phenomenological background to explore abnormal time experiences in persons with abnormal mental conditions regardless of their diagnosis. When extensive data gathered by this scale are available, it will be possible to delineate well-defined anomalous lived temporality profiles for each (...) psychopathological disorder. This instrument may also prove useful for clinicians by providing a more refined assessment of relevant psychopathological symptoms and an in-depth understanding of the patient’s abnormal behaviour as related to specific types of time experience. In the first part of the article, we provide a brief overview of the phenomenological concept of temporality, including pre-phenomenal and phenomenal time, synthesis, conation and synchronization, and of abnormal time experiences in persons affected by psychopathological conditions. In the following part, we describe the basic structure of the interview that comprises seven categories corresponding to the abnormal features of lived temporality: anomalies of synchrony, of time structure, of implicit time flow, of explicit time flow, and anomalous experiences of the past, the present and the future. The paper also includes a section on administration and scoring of the TATE scale, the complete interview and a Likert table for quantifying the frequency, intensity and interference with daily life of the phenomena explored. (shrink)

I argue that Van der Velde and I agree on two fundamental issues surrounding the vision-related binding problem and recent solutions that have been offered: (1) that tagging theories fail to account for object feature binding in visual consciousness and (2) that feedforward-feedback processes in the visual cortical hierarchy play a role in generating a feature-unified object of visual consciousness. Van der Velde develops and discusses an important objection to tagging theories that could help to strengthen my critique (...) of neuronal synchrony (and other tagging theories) and then argues that the cognitive subject makes no explanatory contribution to the unity of an object’s features in visual consciousness. These issues are discussed in turn. By contrast, Van Leeuwen takes a more critical approach to my target article. A two-fold response to Van Leeuwen is offered: first, the root of Van Leeuwen’s perplexity is uncovered and then some specific objections that Van Leeuwen poses to my critique of neuronal synchrony, as a purported solution of the object feature binding problem, are addressed. (shrink)

The shared circuits model (SCM) is a useful explanatory framework that can be applied to interpersonal synchrony by incorporating temporal dynamics. Temporally precise predictive simulations and mirroring enable interpersonal synchrony. When partners' movements are highly synchronous, the self/other distinction can be blurred.

Neurophysiological studies in humans employing magneto- and electro- encephalography increasingly suggest that oscillatory rhythmic activity of the brain may be a core mechanism for binding sensory information across space, time, and object features to generate a unified perceptual representation. To distinguish whether oscillatory activity is causally related to binding processes or whether, on the contrary, it is a mere epiphenomenon, one possibility is to employ neuromodulatory techniques such as transcranial alternating current stimulation. tACS has seen a rising interest (...) due to its ability to modulate brain oscillations in a frequency-dependent manner. In the present review, we critically summarize current tACS evidence for a causal role of oscillatory activity in spatial, temporal, and feature binding in the context of visual perception. For temporal binding, the emerging picture supports a causal link with the power and the frequency of occipital alpha rhythms ; however, there is no consistent evidence on the causal role of the phase of occipital tACS. For feature binding, the only study available showed a modulation by occipital alpha tACS. The majority of studies that successfully modulated oscillatory activity and behavioral performance in spatial binding targeted parietal areas, with the main rhythms causally linked being the theta and beta frequency bands. On the other hand, spatio-temporal binding has been directly modulated by parieto-occipital gamma and alpha tACS, suggesting a potential role of cross-frequency coupling when binding across space and time. Nonetheless, negative or partial results have also been observed, suggesting methodological limitations that should be addressed in future research. Overall, the emerging picture seems to support a causal role of brain oscillations in binding processes and, consequently, a certain degree of plasticity for shaping binding mechanisms in visual perception, which, if proved to have long lasting effects, can find applications in different clinical populations. (shrink)

Exposure to delayed sensory feedback changes perceived simultaneity between action and feedback [temporal recalibration ] and even modulates the sense of agency over the feedback. To date, however, it is not clear whether the modulation of SoA by TR is caused by a change in perceptual sensitivity or decision criterion of self-agency. This experimental research aimed to tease apart these two by applying the signal detection theory to the agency judgment over auditory feedback after voluntary action. Participants heard a (...) short sequence of tone pips with equal inter-onset intervals, and they reproduced it by pressing a computer mouse. The delay of each tone pip after the mouse press was manipulated as 80 or 180 ms. Subsequently, the participants reproduced it, in which the delay was fixed at 80 ms and there was a 50% chance that the computer took over the control of the tone pips from the participants. The participants’ task was to discriminate who controlled the tone pips and to judge synchrony between tone pips and mouse presses. Results showed that the modulation of the SoA by the TR is caused by a shift in the decision criterion but not in the perceptual sensitivity of agency. (shrink)

Color-motion asynchrony (CMA) refers to an apparent lag of direction of motion when a dynamic stimulus changes both color and direction at the same time. The subjective order of simultaneous events, however, is not only perceptual but also subject to illusions during voluntary actions. Self-initiated actions, for example, seem to precede their sensory outcomes following an adaptation to a delay between the action and the sensory feedback. Here, we demonstrate that the extent of the apparent asynchrony can be substantially reduced (...) when direction change is induced by a voluntary key press following a delay adaptation regime. We also show that the reduced color-motion asynchrony effect size following a motor-sensory recalibration is not a result of a change in the onset of perceived direction change relative to that of the color. This is particularly important as it implies, for the first time in the literature, that voluntary action is not only important in forming action-sensory outcome associations but may also act as a binding factor between the two perceptual features of a sensory event. (shrink)