A Simple Paradigm for the Self-Organized Formation of Structured Feature Maps

There exist many kinds of maps or images in the brain; the most familiar ones may be the retinotopic, somatotopic, and tonotopic projections in the primary sensory areas, as well as the somatotopic order of cells in the motor cortex. There is also some experimental evidence (cf., e.g. Lynch et al., 1978) for that topographic maps of the exterior environment are formed in the hippocampus. In this work it is claimed that the brains might also more generally produce ordered maps that are directly or indirectly related to sensory or somatic information. It does not seem impossible that formation of feature maps at various levels of abstraction is the main mode of information processing in the brain.