Cognitive systems have to explore a huge combinatorial space when searching for the consistent relations among features that define a perceptual object. Thus, mechanisms are required that permit rapid analysis and representation of relations between the responses of neurons whose activity signals the presence of particular features. A common and well-documented strategy for the binding of distributed responses is the implementation of conjunction-specific neurons that receive convergent input from elementary feature detectors and therefore respond selectively to the conjunctions of the respective features. This process is known as labeled line coding. However, this coding strategy, if not complemented by an additional binding mechanism, meets with a number of problems. First, large numbers of conjunction units are required for the exhaustive representation of the manifold intra-and cross-modal feature constellations of real-world objects. Second, it is hard to see how novel objects...