As far as I am aware, the sensory streams maintain topology through to the association regions. We have discussed “crazy quilting” as the gross parcellation of topological maps but this is distinctly different from a convergence model. There is no “convergence” as the sensations flow from map to map, and the lateral reach of the components of the various layers is mostly very local. I think that the only way you could describe this is as a distributed representation.
As you can see from the “crazy Quilting” thread I have been exploring this concept with an open mind and have come back to the distributed representation as best fitting the papers I looked at.
I invite you to offer a defense of the cortical hierarchical convergence model with any known biological observations. I don’t consider this as a “done deal” and am very willing to be shown support for a “spreading of representation” model in the actual biology.
I won’t argue that it is not possible to construct such a system - only that is not observed in the biology.