Perceptual binding

In most of the sensory systems various features of a stimulus (example, the shape, color, and motion of an object or the location, loudness, and pitch of the sound) are processed in distinct neurons in broadly dispersed brain areas. How does the brain generate a unified percept from all the disparate bits of information it has about the object? This question is termed as the binding problem. The one possible solution is that all the segregated bits of information pertaining to a single stimulus are bound by synchronous firing of the neurons included. This may be accomplished by brain oscillations, possibly the thalamic neurons which between them are reciprocally connected to all the cortical regions. The synchronization of visual system neurons by the thalamus underlies the visual attention.