title: Is there something out there? Inferring space from sensorimotor dependencies.
abstract: This letter suggests that in biological organisms, the perceived structure of reality, in particular the notions of body, environment, space, object, and attribute, could be a consequence of an effort on the part of brains to account for the dependency between their inputs and their outputs in terms of a small number of parameters. To validate this idea, a procedure is demonstrated whereby the brain of a (simulated) organism with arbitrary input and output connectivity can deduce the dimensionality of the rigid group of the space underlying its input-output relationship, that is, the dimension of what the organism will call physical space.
authors.affiliation: Sony CSL, 75005 Paris, France. david.philipona@polytechnique.org
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Philipona
authors.forename: J K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: O'Regan
authors.forename: J-P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Nadal
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D003198:Computer Simulation; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009046:Motor Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D009475:Neurons, Afferent / Q000502:physiology; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*