Response Properties Of Cortical Cells Research Articles

Spatiochromatic and temporal natural image statistics modelling: Applications from display analysis to neural networks

Natural image statistics are well known to have a spatial frequency power spectra that has a 1/f^a behavior, with a typically stated as between 2 and 4. This indicates an invariance to scale. Further work has theorized how the visual system is tuned for such statistics in visual cortex (V1) [1]. Color image statistics also show an invariance to scale [2]. The luminance histogram is typically understood to be log normal with respect to luminance, although for HDR images, a subcomponent with skew toward much higher luminances is observed. Color statistics were initially described at the simplest level via the gray world hypothesis [3], but more details are now available, even at the hyperspectral [4]. The a power function for HDR was found to increase from the lower values of 2 to more typical values of 4 and 5 [5]. For temporal statistics, the data tends to be measured primarily for media, with a 1/f^a for scene cut statistics [6], and temporal frequency and temporal frequency for media with a focus on the motion statistics via optical flow [7]. Statistics for purely natural as well as human made environments (e.g., buildings and the resulting perspective geometry) have been studied, each having different orientation statistics [8]. The use of image statistics for standardized assessment of television power consumption was used to replace test targets, which were often detected and used to lower TV power consumption in well known cheating schemes. To prevent this, a short test video that had luminance statistics matching 48 hours of broadcast content was generated and used for TV power testing [9]. The highly adaptative nature of current TVs (power limiting, dual modulation, dynamic response) has motivated researchers to incorporate complex noise fields following natural image statistics into measurement targets [10,11]. One particular natural image statistic-based still image test target (dead leaves) is widely used in camera optics and sensor development. Algorithm development and testing for image and video processing has almost always been ad hoc, with a mixture of geometric test targets and hand selected test images, sometimes aiming to be corner cases, sometimes not. More recently, large data sets of images have been used to train various neural network models for tasks such as super resolution, bit rate compression, and dynamic range mapping. However, images are not ergodic, and possibly not even wide-sense stationary. We propose the use of imagery based on noise following the natural image statistics for spatio-chromatic (and temporal) to compactly probe the wide variety of image possibilities for algorithmic development, in addition to the existing uses for image capture and display analysis. While we don’t suggest replacing actual practical imagery, we believe such noise fields can augment image algorithm analysis. To address the problem of non-ergodicity, we allow the basic power term a in the natural image statistic model to vary over a large range in a video, such that it includes the extremes of white noise and low frequency gradients. We use color image statistic models that include decorrelated colors to generate the RGB video. We will present results for traditional adaptive data compression (with chromatic subsampling), as well as a more contemporary neural network approach (Neural Fields [12]) as applied to upscaling and denoising. We analyze the results both visually and through several recent color image quality models. Field DJ. Relations between the statistics of natural images and the response properties of cortical cells. J. Opt. Soc. Am. A, 1987; 4:2379-2394 C. Parraga, T. Troscianko, and D.J. Tolhurst (2002) spatiochromatic properties of natural images and human vision. Current Biology V 12 R. M. Evans, Method for correcting photographic color prints, US Patent 2,571,697 (1951) A. Chakrabarti and T. Zickler (2011) Statistics of real-world hyperspectral images CVPR R. Dror, A. Willsky, and E. Adelson (2004) statistical characterization of real-world illumination. JOV V4 J. Cutting (2019) Sequences in popular cinema generate inconsistent event segmentation. Attn. Percept. And Psycho. V 81. D. Lee, H. Ko, J. Kim, and A. Bovik (2021) On the space-time statistics of motion pictures. JOSA A V 38 #7 A. Torralba and A. Oliva (2003) Statistics of natural image categories, Network: Computational Neural Systems 14 391-412 International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC 62087:2008(E), “Methods of measurement for the power consumption of audio, video, and related Equipment. Kunkel T, Daly S. 57-1: Spatiotemporal Noise Targets Inspired by Natural Imagery Statistics. SID Symposium Digest of Technical Papers, 2020, 51:842-845. Kunkel, T, Friedrich, F. Utilizing advanced spatio-temporal backgrounds with dynamic test signals for high dynamic range display metrology. J Soc Inf Display. 2022; 30( 5): 423– 432. https://doi.org/10.1002/jsid.1125 Yiheng Xie1, Towaki Takikawa, Shunsuke Saito, Or Litany, Shiqin Yan, Numair Khan, Federico Tombari, James Tompkin, Vincent Sitzmann, Srinath Sridhar1, "Neural Fields in Visual Computing and Beyond", Eurographics / CGF State-of-the-Art Report, 2022.

Thalamocortical NMDA conductances and intracortical inhibition can explain cortical temporal tuning.

Cells in cerebral cortex fail to respond to fast-moving stimuli that evoke strong responses in the thalamic nuclei innervating the cortex. The reason for this behavior has remained a mystery. We study an experimentally motivated model of the thalamic input-recipient layer of cat primary visual cortex that accounts for many aspects of cortical orientation tuning. In this circuit, inhibition dominates over excitation, but temporal modulations of excitation and inhibition occur out of phase with one another, allowing excitation to transiently drive cells. We show that this circuit provides a natural explanation of cortical low-pass temporal frequency tuning, provided N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors are present in thalamocortical synapses in proportions measured experimentally. This suggests a new and unanticipated role for NMDA conductances in shaping the temporal response properties of cortical cells, and suggests that common cortical circuit mechanisms underlie both spatial and temporal response tuning.

Relations between the statistics of natural images and the response properties of cortical cells.

The relative efficiency of any particular image-coding scheme should be defined only in relation to the class of images that the code is likely to encounter. To understand the representation of images by the mammalian visual system, it might therefore be useful to consider the statistics of images from the natural environment (i.e., images with trees, rocks, bushes, etc). In this study, various coding schemes are compared in relation to how they represent the information in such natural images. The coefficients of such codes are represented by arrays of mechanisms that respond to local regions of space, spatial frequency, and orientation (Gabor-like transforms). For many classes of image, such codes will not be an efficient means of representing information. However, the results obtained with six natural images suggest that the orientation and the spatial-frequency tuning of mammalian simple cells are well suited for coding the information in such images if the goal of the code is to convert higher-order redundancy (e.g., correlation between the intensities of neighboring pixels) into first-order redundancy (i.e., the response distribution of the coefficients). Such coding produces a relatively high signal-to-noise ratio and permits information to be transmitted with only a subset of the total number of cells. These results support Barlow's theory that the goal of natural vision is to represent the information in the natural environment with minimal redundancy.

Prolonged sensitivity to monocular deprivation in dark-reared cats: effects of age and visual exposure.

Previous studies have shown that the response properties of cortical cells of cats reared in darkness throughout the naturally-occurring critical period can still be modified by environmental manipulation. Here the effects of extremely prolonged dark-rearing, and of light exposure before or after dark-rearing on subsequent susceptibility to monocular deprivation are examined. Monocular deprivation remains effective in altering cortical ocular dominance even in cats which have been dark-reared for up to 2 years, long after the end of the naturally occurring critical period. The effects of monocular deprivation are, however, less pronounced in these cats than in animals dark-reared for shorter periods of time. The effects of visual exposure before dark-rearing were examined by allowing kittens 2 months of normal vision followed by 3 months of dark-rearing. Then, the effects of monocular suture were compared among these kittens and: (1) 2-month-old normal kittens (which had the same amount of visual exposure as the experimental animals); and (2) 5-month-old normal kittens (of the same age as the experimental animals). The results show that monocular deprivation is more effective in the experimental animals than in normal kittens of the same age, but less effective than in normal 2-month-old animals. The effects of visual exposure after dark-rearing were examined by allowing animals dark-reared for 4 months varied durations of binocular visual exposure before monocular suture. Susceptibility to monocular suture disappears about 6 weeks after the dark-reared animals are brought into the light.

Mechanisms underlying the receptive field properties of neurons in cat visual cortex

Several previous models of the circuitry of the cat's primary visual cortex are briefly described and various difficulties with them are pointed out. It is argued that the situation is more complicated than any of these models supposed, and that some of the anomalies in previous models can be overcome if additional factors are considered. A new model is proposed in which cells with strong hypercomplex properties are driven directly by geniculate cells with superimposed receptive fields, and other cortical cells are driven by geniculate cells with more scattered receptive fields. This model accounts for many of the response properties of cortical cells.