Our studies indicate that different visual areas in the brain may communicate via temporally modulated messages. We showed previously that neurons in different areas of the brain encode and transmit information about stationary, two-dimensional pictures that vary in form, brightness, and duration. We also showed that information about remembered visual features was carried by a temporal code. Now we have extended those studies to show that neurons in the visual cortex (areas V1, V2, V3, and V4) carry information about the form, color, luminance, and size of a stimulus in a temporally modulated code. Our results suggest that cortical neurons are able to convey information about many different features without confounding them. The mechanism for encoding these multiple messages uses temporal modulation to multiplex the different messages on the neuron's response in a separable way.
