Similarities Between the AdS/CFT Correspondence and the Binding Problem

Abstract

The binding problem refers to the puzzle of how the brain combines objects’ properties such as motion, color, shape, location, sound, etc., from diverse regions of the brain and forms a unified subjective experience. Holographic physical systems, recently discovered darlings of theoretical physics, began with research into black holes but have since evolved into the study of condensed matter systems in the laboratory like superfluids and superconductors. A primary example is the AdS/CFT correspondence. A recent conjecture of this correspondence suggests that holographic systems combine information from across a boundary surface, sort out the simplest description of said information, and, in turn, use it to determine the geometry of spacetime itself in the interior - a kind of geometric hologram. Although we would never tend to think of these two processes as related, in this paper we point out ten similarities between the two and show that holographic systems are the only physical systems that match the subjective and computational characteristics of the binding problem.