Spontaneous emergence of fast attractor dynamics in a model of developing primary visual cortex.

ABSTRACT: Recent evidence suggests that neurons in primary sensory cortex arrange into competitive groups, representing stimuli by their joint activity rather than as independent feature analysers. A possible explanation for these results is that sensory cortex implements attractor dynamics, although this proposal remains controversial. Here we report that fast attractor dynamics emerge naturally in a computational model of a patch of primary visual cortex endowed with realistic plasticity (at both feedforward and lateral synapses) and mutual inhibition. When exposed to natural images (but not random pixels), the model spontaneously arranges into competitive groups of reciprocally connected, similarly tuned neurons, while developing realistic, orientation-selective receptive fields. Importantly, the

SUBMITTER: Miconi T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5095518 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature