title: Coupling an aVLSI neuromorphic vision chip to a neurotrophic model of synaptic plasticity: the development of topography.
abstract: We couple a previously studied, biologically inspired neurotrophic model of activity-dependent competitive synaptic plasticity and neuronal development to a neuromorphic retina chip. Using this system, we examine the development and refinement of a topographic mapping between an array of afferent neurons (the retinal ganglion cells) and an array of target neurons. We find that the plasticity model can indeed drive topographic refinement in the presence of afferent activity patterns generated by a real-world device. We examine the resilience of the developing system to the presence of high levels of noise by adjusting the spontaneous firing rate of the silicon neurons.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom. te@ecs.soton.ac.uk
authors.forename: Terry
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Elliott
authors.forename: Jörg
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kramer
mesh_terms: D008959:Models, Neurological; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer; D009473:Neuronal Plasticity / Q000502:physiology*; D012165:Retinal Ganglion Cells / Q000502:physiology*; D012371:Robotics; D012825:Silicon; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000502:physiology
chemical_list: D012825:Silicon