The standard cortical model assumes that the meaning of a neuron's signal i
s contained in its firing rate. While that model has been used to interpret
a voluminous amount of experimental data, it does not address the question
of timing, or how recipient neurons can decode this signal in time to pred
ict behavioral results. We propose a model based on coincident firing of la
rge groups of neurons. We show using an example of predictive coding, how t
he cortex can support vast amounts of non-interfering parallel computation.
(C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.