The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science

by Culadasa (John Yates)

The question of how information from different senses gets combined is one aspect of a much larger question known in cognitive science as the “binding problem.” Specifically, the process by which different sensory modalities are combined is called perceptual binding. The process by which something currently sensed is combined with memories and stored concepts to produce recognition and identification is cognitive binding. The process by which internal and external information of every kind is combined to produce the experience of a unitary “world” or “reality” is called phenomenal binding. It’s through binding moments that the products of these different binding processes become conscious.