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Gestalt Issues in Modern Neuroscience

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Abstract

We present select examples of how visual phenomena can serve as tools to uncoverbrain mechanisms. Specifically, receptive field organization is proposed as a Gestalt-like neural mechanism of perceptual organization. Appropriate phenomena, such as brightness and orientation contrast, subjective contours, filling-in, and aperture-viewed motion, allow for a quantitative comparison between receptive fields and their psychophysical counterparts, perceptive fields. Phenomenology might thus be extended from the study of perceptual qualities to their transphenomenal substrates, including memory functions. In conclusion, classic issues of Gestalt psychology can now be related to modern “Gestalt psychophysics” and neuroscience.

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  1. Walter H. Ehrenstein
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  2. Lothar Spillmann
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  3. Viktor Sarris
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Ehrenstein, W.H., Spillmann, L. & Sarris, V. Gestalt Issues in Modern Neuroscience. Axiomathes 13, 433–458 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:AXIO.0000007203.44686.aa

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