Attractors, memory and perception

In this Thesis, the first three introductory chapters are devoted to the review of literature on contextual perception, its neural basis and network modeling of memory. In chapter 4, the first two sections give the definition of our model; and the next two sections, 4.3 and 4.4, report the original work of mine on retrieval properties of different network structures and network dynamics underlying the response to ambiguous patterns, respectively. The reported work in chapter 5 has been done in collaboration with Prof Bharathi Jagadeesh in University of Washington, and is already published in the journal ”Cerebral Cortex”. In this collaboration, Yan Liu, from the group in Seattle, carried out the recording experiments and I did the data analysis and network simulations. Chapter 6, which represents a network model for ”priming” and ”adaptation aftereffect” is done by me. The works reported in 4.3, 4.5, and the whole chapter 6 are in preparation for publication.