Abstract For:
Chance, F.S., Nelson, S.B. and Abbott, L.F. (1999) Complex Cells as Cortically
Amplified Simple Cells. Nature Neuroscience 2: 277-282.
The majority of synapses in primary visual cortex mediate excitation between
nearby neurons, yet the role of local recurrent connections in visual processing
remains unclear. We propose that these connections are responsible for the
spatial-phase invariance of complex-cell responses. In a network model with
selective cortical amplification, neurons exhibit simple-cell responses when
recurrent connections are weak and complex-cell responses when they are strong,
suggesting that simple and complex cells are the low- and high-gain limits
of the same basic cortical circuit. Given the ubiquity of invariant responses
in cognitive processing, the recurrent mechanism we propose for complex cells
may be widely applicable.
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