Role of Affordance in Perception: Decoding the Sensory Input

Daya Shankar Gupta^1* & Andreas Bahmer²

¹Biology Department, Camden County College, Blackwood, New Jersey, USA
²Medical Faculty, University Würzburg, Germany

Dr. Daya Shankar Gupta, Biology Department, Camden County College, Blackwood, New Jersey, USA.

Keywords: Sensory Input; Cortex; Ecological Psychology; Information Theory; Temporal Coupling

Abstract

In past years, there has been slow progress in the application of Shannon’s mathematical theory of communication to the information processing in the brain. One of the major hurdles has been the lack of a plausible neurobiological correlate that would decode sensory inputs. We note that deciphering the sensory inputs based on potential actions is a key component of perception. We propose that affordance, which is an environmental property, such as height, shape, weight, etc. that can allow opportunities for actions by the organism, is a potential code that would decode the sensory input. The connections between the dorsal and ventral streams would serve as the anatomical basis of decoding by affordance, leading to perception. Furthermore, the current proposal is consistent with Bayesian and generative Markovian models of active inference.

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