Event Abstract Back to Event The value of lateral connectivity in visual cortex for interpreting naturalistic images Xaq Pitkow1*, Yashar Ahmadian2 and Ken Miller1 1 Columbia University, Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, United States 2 Columbia University, Department of Statistics, United States In many species, orientation-selective neurons in primary visual cortex are preferentially connected to others with similar orientation selectivity. It has been hypothesized that this circuitry is tuned to the statistics of natural scenes, and helps refine the interpretation of feedforward visual inputs: it may provide a mechanism by which neural networks can exploit the natural correlations between nearby edges. A related but more general claim holds for the machine learning algorithm called belief propagation. In this algorithm, model neurons encode the probabilities of local features and send information about their current state to other neurons encoding statistically related features. Following these dynamics, a network of such neurons converges to a consensus state representing the most probable synthesis of the available information. In this study we test how well neurally plausible approximations of belief propagation perform on feature discrimination tasks. Using a simple occlusion model of natural scenes, we are able to compute the probabilities of image features exactly, providing a ground truth against which we compare the performance of these model networks. We calculate how performance varies with the specificity and range of lateral connectivity, and compare the effectiveness of a given connectivity structure for neurons of different response types (simple cells, complex cells, border ownership cells). Finally we discuss the implications of these results for neural coding in primary and secondary visual cortex. Conference: Computational and Systems Neuroscience 2010, Salt Lake City, UT, United States, 25 Feb - 2 Mar, 2010. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Poster session II Citation: Pitkow X, Ahmadian Y and Miller K (2010). The value of lateral connectivity in visual cortex for interpreting naturalistic images. Front. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: Computational and Systems Neuroscience 2010. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2010.03.00209 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 04 Mar 2010; Published Online: 04 Mar 2010. * Correspondence: Xaq Pitkow, Columbia University, Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, New York, United States, xaq@post.harvard.edu Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Xaq Pitkow Yashar Ahmadian Ken Miller Google Xaq Pitkow Yashar Ahmadian Ken Miller Google Scholar Xaq Pitkow Yashar Ahmadian Ken Miller PubMed Xaq Pitkow Yashar Ahmadian Ken Miller Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.