Neural ensemble coding and statistical periodicity: speculations on the operation of the mind's eye.

Statistical periodicity is a statistical property of densities which arises in the description of retarded dynamical systems. This property is particularly attractive as a possible mechanism for the ensemble coding of information in the nervous system because it operates rapidly and has high storage capacity. For a population of neurons which exhibits statistical periodicity, information would not be encoded by the periodicity, but rather by the spatio-temporal distributions of neural activity. Statistical periodicity is discussed in relation to the temporal binding hypothesis and to the occurrence of multistability in neural systems.