I don’t know how familiar everyone is with the “binding problem” so here’s a link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_problem
It says “The binding problem is, basically, the problem of how the unity of conscious perception is brought about by the distributed activities of the central nervous system.” - that is, how is it that we perceive different properties of an object as bound to the same object when the neural networks that correspond to the perception of these properties are in different parts of the brain? So, for example, if I see a red car driving by, my parietal lobe processes information about its motion while my occipital and temporal lobes process information about its color. Yet I see its motion and color as belonging to the same object. How does the brain know that these different pieces of information belong together?
One proposed solution to this is the theory of synchrony. It says that so long as neurons fire in synchrony, as would be the case in seeing a red car drive by, the corresponding perceptions will be bound together. One problem I have with this - and I hope someone can shed some light on it since that is the reason I posting this thread - is that there are ample examples of neurons firing in synchrony yet their corresponding perceptions are not bound together. One example is seeing a fly on the wall while listen to music on the radio. The sight of the fly corresponds to the visual cortex while the sound of the music corresponds to the auditory cortex. They are firing in synchrony, yet we do not perceive the fly and the music as bound together - we do not see a singing fly.
Am I misunderstanding the theory of synchrony, or is this a genuine flaw in this particular solution to the binding problem.