skip navigation

Not in the United States?
change your preferences.

Brain and Perception

Holonomy and Structure in Figural Processing

• By Karl H. Pribram

• Price: $99.95
• Binding: Hardback
• Pages: 400
• Published by: Psychology Press (formerly published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates)
• Publication Date: 1st June 1991
• ISBN: 978-0-89859-995-4

About the Book

Presented as a series of lectures, this important volume achieves four major goals:

1) It integrates the results of the author's research as applied to pattern perception -- reviewing current brain research and showing how several lines of inquiry have been converging to produce a paradigm shift in our understanding of the neural basis of figural perception.

2) It updates the holographic hypothesis of brain function in perception.

3) It emphasizes the fact that both distributed (holistic) and localized (structural) processes characterize brain function.

4) It portrays a neural systems analysis of brain organization in figural perception by computational models -- describing processing in terms of formalisms found useful in ordering data in 20th-century physical and engineering sciences.

The lectures are divided into three parts: a Prolegomenon outlining a theoretical framework for the presentation; Part I dealing with the configural aspects of perception; and Part II presenting its cognitive aspects. The appendices were developed in a collaborative effort by the author, Kunio Yasue, and Mari Jibu (both of Notre Dame Seishin University of Okayama, Japan).

Table of Contents

Contents: Preface. Acknowledgments. Viewpoint. Prolegomenon.Aims and Origins. Outlines of a Holonomic Brain Theory. Part I: Configural Aspects. Transformational Realism: The Optic Array, the Optical Image and the Retinal Process. Imaging: Cooperativity in Primary Sensory Systems. Object-Forms and Object Spaces: Sensory-Motor Reciprocity. Images of Achievement and Action Spaces: Somatic Processes in the Control of Action. Part II: Cognitive Aspects. Comprehension: Contributions of the Posterior Cerebral Convexity in Enhancing Processing Span. Familiarization and Valuation: The Contributions of the Amygdala System to the Demarcation of an Episode. Irrelevance and Innovation: The Contributions of the Hippocampus and Limbic Forebrain to the Processing of Context. Envisioning Proprieties and Priorities; Practical Inference: The Far Frontal Cortex as Executive Processor. Epilogue. Appendices: Neurodynamics: A Theory of Nonlocal Cortical Processing. Symmetry, Invariance and Group Theory in Object Perception. The Definition of Context. Familiarization as Transfer Among Contexts. The Formation of Prototypes. Neurodynamics and Innovation. The Neurodynamics of Covariation and Inference.