Are there “local hotspots?” When concepts of cognitive psychology do not fit with physiological results

Abstract

AbstractMather and colleagues' arguments require rethinking at the mechanistic level. The arguments on the physiological effects of norepinephrine at the cortical level are inconsistent with large parts of the literature. There is no evidence that norepinephrine induces local “hotspots”: Norepinephrine mainly decreases evoked responses; facilitating effects are rare and not localized. More generally, the idea that perception benefits from “local hotspots” is hardly compatible with the fact that neural representations involve largely distributed activation of cortical and subcortical networks.