Scene statistics and noise determine the relative arrangement of receptive field mosaics.

ABSTRACT: Many sensory systems utilize parallel ON and OFF pathways that signal stimulus increments and decrements, respectively. These pathways consist of ensembles or grids of ON and OFF detectors spanning sensory space. Yet, encoding by opponent pathways raises a question: How should grids of ON and OFF detectors be arranged to optimally encode natural stimuli? We investigated this question using a model of the retina guided by efficient coding theory. Specifically, we optimized spatial receptive fields and contrast response functions to encode natural images given noise and constrained firing rates. We find that the optimal arrangement of ON and OFF receptive fields exhibits a transition between aligned and antialigned grids. The preferred phase depends on detector noise and the statistical stru

SUBMITTER: Jun NY 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8488585 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature