[lordnacho]

I'm no expert on either field, but this neurobiology explanation sounds a lot like what you read about in recent neural network posts:

You have some base layers taking in the physical information.

Some of those are connected in groups, somewhat like the a convolution stage scanning a sub-area.

Sometimes, some of those areas collectively show something interesting and pass it up. Kinda like max-pooling.

With artifical NNs, there are also images that fool the network in various ways.