Mental representations: A computational-neuroscience scheme

We discuss a series of problems facing referential theories of mental representations and we propose a scheme based on neurophysiological principles that avoids previous limitations. According to this scheme, mental representations are brain traces linked to stimuli in the environment, via a causal but probabilistic process of categorical perception, and fluctuations in activity reflect fluctuations in the confidence-level of perceptual and cognitive hypotheses. The scheme provides an explanation for cases of misrepresentation and is consistent with the abundance of recurrent connections in the cortex, which play an important role in mediating a process of interpretation and of binding of relational properties via temporal synchronisation.