This review synthesizes physiological and computational evidence on neural traveling waves (nTWs) in cortex — how they arise, what circuit mechanisms generate them, and how they may implement spatiotemporal computations, with a focus on the visual system.
nTWs structure neural activity across cortical regions by introducing spatiotemporal dependencies not captured by purely feedforward or feedback processing; they can embed sensory history in evolving activity patterns and may support predictive coding of upcoming sensory inputs.
As a review/conceptual paper, no new empirical data are presented; the proposed framework for spatiotemporal generative processing by nTWs is conceptual and lacks direct experimental validation.
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