The theoretical setting of hierarchical Bayesian inference is gaining acceptance as a framework for understanding cortical computation. In this paper, we describe how Bayesian belief propagation in a spatio-temporal hierarchical model, called Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM), can lead to a mathematical model for cortical circuits. An HTM node is abstracted using a coincidence detector and a mixture of Markov chains. Bayesian belief propagation equations for such an HTM node define a set of functional constraints for a neuronal implementation. Anatomical data provide a contrasting set of organizational constraints. The combination of these two constraints suggests a theoretically derived interpretation for many anatomical and physiological features and predicts several others. We describe the pattern recognition capabilities of HTM networks and demonstrate the application of the derived circuits for modeling the subjective contour effect. We also discuss how the theory and the circuit can be extended to explain cortical features that are not explained by the current model and describe testable predictions that can be derived from the model.

Spike timing dependent plasticity (STDP) is a learning rule that modifies synaptic strength as a function of the relative timing of pre- and postsynaptic spikes. When a neuron is repeatedly presented with similar inputs, STDP is known to have the effect of concentrating high synaptic weights on afferents that systematically fire early, while postsynaptic spike latencies decrease. Here we use this learning rule in an asynchronous feedforward spiking neural network that mimics the ventral visual pathway and shows that when the network is presented with natural images, selectivity to intermediate-complexity visual features emerges. Those features, which correspond to prototypical patterns that are both salient and consistently present in the images, are highly informative and enable robust object recognition, as demonstrated on various classification tasks. Taken together, these results show that temporal codes may be a key to understanding the phenomenal processing speed achieved by the visual system and that STDP can lead to fast and selective responses.

cameras, biometric sensors, etc.). Uncovering these algorithms agreed-upon sets of images, tasks, and measures, and these neuroscientists seek to integrate these clues to produce hypoth-What Does It Mean to Say ‘‘We Want to Understand Object Recognition’’? to reveal ways for extending and generalizing beyond those abil-ities, and to expose ways to repair broken neuronal circuits and augment normal circuits.Conceptually, we want to know how the visual system can take each retinal image and report the identities or categories of one Progress toward understanding object recognition is driven by linking phenomena at different levels of abstraction.requires expertise from psychophysics, cognitive neuroscience, neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, computational neuroscience, computer vision, and machine learning, and the traditional boundaries between these fields are dissolving. eses (a.k.a. algorithms) that can be experimentally distinguished. This synergy is leading to high-performing artificial vision

Neurons in the ventral stream of the primate visual system exhibit responses to the images of objects which are invariant with respect to natural transformations such as translation, size, and view. Anatomical and neurophysiological evidence suggests that this is achieved through a series of hierarchical processing areas. In an attempt to elucidate the manner in which such representations are established, we have constructed a model of cortical visual processing which seeks to parallel many features of this system, specifically the multi-stage hierarchy with its topologically constrained convergent connectivity. Each stage is constructed as a competitive network utilising a modified Hebb-like learning rule, called the trace rule, which incorporates previous as well as current neuronal activity. The trace rule enables neurons to learn about whatever is invariant over short time periods (e.g. 0.5 s) in the representation of objects as the objects transform in the real world. The trace ru...

We have explored two approaches to recognizing faces across changes in pose. First, we developed a representation of face images based on independent component analysis (ICA) and compared it to a principal component analysis (PCA) representation for face recognition. The ICA basis vectors for this data set were more spatially local than the PCA basis vectors and the ICA representation had greater invariance to changes in pose. Second, we present a model for the development of viewpoint invariant responses to faces from visual experience in a biological system. The temporal continuity of natural visual experience was incorporated into an attractor network model by Hebbian learning following a lowpass temporal filter on unit activities. When combined with the temporal filter, a basic Hebbian update rule became a generalization of Griniasty et al. (1993), which associates temporally proximal input patterns into basins of attraction. The system acquired representations of faces that were largely independent of pose.

Abstract While many models of biological object recognition share a common set of ''broad-stroke'' properties, the performance of any one model depends strongly on the choice of parameters in a particular instantiation of that model-e.g., the number of units per layer, the size of pooling kernels, exponents in normalization operations, etc. Since the number of such parameters (explicit or implicit) is typically large and the computational cost of evaluating one particular parameter set is high, the space of possible model instantiations goes largely unexplored. Thus, when a model fails to approach the abilities of biological visual systems, we are left uncertain whether this failure is because we are missing a fundamental idea or because the correct ''parts'' have not been tuned correctly, assembled at sufficient scale, or provided with enough training. Here, we present a high-throughput approach to the exploration of such parameter sets, leveraging recent advances in stream processing hardware (high-end NVIDIA graphic cards and the PlayStation 3's IBM Cell Processor). In analogy to highthroughput screening approaches in molecular biology and genetics, we explored thousands of potential network architectures and parameter instantiations, screening those that show promising object recognition performance for further analysis. We show that this approach can yield significant, reproducible gains in performance across an array of basic object recognition tasks, consistently outperforming a variety of state-of-the-art purpose-built vision systems from the literature. As the scale of available computational power continues to expand, we argue that this approach has the potential to greatly accelerate progress in both artificial vision and our understanding of the computational underpinning of biological vision.

This paper proposes a unifying framework for several models of the statistical structure of natural image sequences. The framework combines three properties: sparseness, temporal coherence, and energy correlations; these will be reviewed below. It leads to models where the joint activation of the linear filters (simple cells) takes the form of "bubbles," which are regions of activity that are localized both in time and in space, space meaning the cortical surface or a grid on which the filters are arranged. The paper is organized as follows. First, we discuss the principal statistical properties of natural images investigated so far, and we examine how these can be used in the estimation of a linear image model (Section 2). Then we show how sparseness and temporal coherence can be combined in a single model, which is based on the concept of temporal bubbles, and attempt to demonstrate that this gives a better model of the outputs of Gabor-like linear filters than either of the criteria alone (Section 3). We extend the model to include topography as well, leading to the intuitive notion of spatiotemporal bubbles (Section 4). We also discuss the extensions of the framework to spatiotemporal receptive fields (Section 5). Finally, we discuss the utility of our model and its relation to other models (Section 6)

We present a model for the self-organized formation of place cells, head-direction cells, and spatial-view cells in the hippocampal formation based on unsupervised learning on quasi-natural visual stimuli. The model comprises a hierarchy of Slow Feature Analysis (SFA) nodes, which were recently shown to reproduce many properties of complex cells in the early visual system [1]. The system extracts a distributed grid-like representation of position and orientation, which is transcoded into a localized place-field, head-direction, or view representation, by sparse coding. The type of cells that develops depends solely on the relevant input statistics, i.e., the movement pattern of the simulated animal. The numerical simulations are complemented by a mathematical analysis that allows us to accurately predict the output of the top SFA layer.

A new algorithmic framework called denoising source separation (DSS) is introduced. The main benefit of this framework is that it allows for easy development of new source separation algorithms which are optimised for specific problems. In this framework, source separation algorithms are constucted around denoising procedures. The resulting algorithms can range from almost blind to highly specialised source separation algorithms. Both simple linear and more complex nonlinear or adaptive denoising schemes are considered. Some existing independent component analysis algorithms are reinterpreted within DSS framework and new, robust blind source separation algorithms are suggested. Although DSS algorithms need not be explicitly based on objective functions, there is often an implicit objective function that is optimised. The exact relation between the denoising procedure and the objective function is derived and a useful approximation of the objective function is presented. In the experimental section, various DSS schemes are applied extensively to artificial data, to real magnetoencephalograms and to simulated CDMA mobile network signals. Finally, various extensions to the proposed DSS algorithms are considered. These include nonlinear observation mappings, hierarchical models and overcomplete, nonorthogonal feature spaces. With these extensions, DSS appears to have relevance to many existing models of neural information processing.

Human and non-human primates excel at visual recognition tasks. The primate visual system exhibits a strong degree of selectivity while at the same time being robust to changes in the input image. We have developed a quantitative theory to account for the computations performed by the feedforward path in the ventral stream of the primate visual cortex. Here we review recent predictions by a model instantiating the theory about physiological observations in higher visual areas. We also show that the model can perform recognition tasks on datasets of complex natural images at a level comparable to psychophysical measurements on human observers during rapid categorization tasks. In sum, the evidence suggests that the theory may provide a framework to explain the first 100–150 ms of visual object recognition. The model also constitutes a vivid example of how computational models can interact with experimental observations in order to advance our understanding of a complex phenomenon. We conclude by suggesting a number of open questions, predictions, and specific experiments for visual physiology and psychophysics.