To the retired neurobiologist Steven Wise, formerly of NIMH, the findings imply that instead of categorizing cortical areas in terms of their specialized visual, auditory, somatosensory or executive functions, researchers should study the different combinations of information they represent. One region might be involved in representing simple combinations of features, such as “orange” and “square” for an orange square. Other regions might represent more complex combinations of visual features, or combinations of acoustic or quantitative information.
Wise argues that this brain organization scheme explains why there’s
so much unexpected functional overlap in the traditional maps of mental
activity. When each region represents a particular combination of
information, “it does that for memory, and for perception, and for
attention, and for the control of action,” Wise said." Quanta