Contour Integration and Synchronization in Neuronal Networks of the Visual Cortex

  • Authors:

  • Ekkehard Ullner;Raúl Vicente;Gordon Pipa;Jordi García-Ojalvo

  • Affiliations:

  • Departament de Física i Enginyeria Nuclear, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Terrassa, Spain E---08222;Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, , Frankfurt/Main, Germany D-60528 and Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, , Frankfurt/Main, Germany D-60438;Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, , Frankfurt/Main, Germany D-60528 and Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, , Frankfurt/Main, Germany D-60438 and Dep. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, ...;Departament de Física i Enginyeria Nuclear, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Terrassa, Spain E---08222

  • Venue:
  • ICANN '08 Proceedings of the 18th international conference on Artificial Neural Networks, Part II
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

The visual perception of contours by the brain is selective. When embedded within a noisy background, closed contours are detected faster, and with higher certainty, than open contours. We investigate this phenomenon theoretically with the paradigmatic excitable FitzHugh-Nagumo model, by considering a set of locally coupled oscillators subject to local uncorrelated noise. Noise is needed to overcome the excitation threshold and evoke spikes. We model one-dimensional structures and consider the synchronization throughout them as a mechanism for contour perception, for various system sizes and local noise intensities. The model with a closed ring structure shows a significantly higher synchronization than the one with the open structure. Interestingly, the effect is most pronounced for intermediate system sizes and noise intensities.