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Are there “local hotspots?” When concepts of cognitive psychology do not fit with physiological results

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2017

Quentin Gaucher  and
Jean-Marc Edeline
Quentin Gaucher
Affiliation:
Paris-Saclay Institute of Neurosciences (Neuro-PSI), University Paris-Sud, CNRS, and Paris-Saclay University, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France jean-marc.edeline@u-psud.fr gaucher.quentin@gmail.com http://neuro-psi.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article135
Jean-Marc Edeline
Affiliation:
Paris-Saclay Institute of Neurosciences (Neuro-PSI), University Paris-Sud, CNRS, and Paris-Saclay University, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France jean-marc.edeline@u-psud.fr gaucher.quentin@gmail.com http://neuro-psi.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article135
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Abstract

Mather and colleagues' arguments require rethinking at the mechanistic level. The arguments on the physiological effects of norepinephrine at the cortical level are inconsistent with large parts of the literature. There is no evidence that norepinephrine induces local “hotspots”: Norepinephrine mainly decreases evoked responses; facilitating effects are rare and not localized. More generally, the idea that perception benefits from “local hotspots” is hardly compatible with the fact that neural representations involve largely distributed activation of cortical and subcortical networks.

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 39 , 2016 , e208
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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