Retinotopic coding and neural grouping in tilt illusion

Abstract

We propose a network model for explaining tilt illusion based on a V1 circuit preserving retinotopy and a mechanism for grouping neuronal activities. The simulation of the model indicates that many V1 neurons show responses which correspond to the tilt effects, depending on the geometric configuration of the local visual pattern projected on to the receptive field of the neuron. Grouping V1 neurons based on the segmentation suggested by our psychophysical experiments, the model reproduces the apparent orientations of the bars in good quantitative agreement with the results of comparable psychophysical experiments reported elsewhere.