Inferring figure-ground using a recurrent integrate-and-fire neural circuit.
Several theories of early visual perception hypothesize neural circuits that are responsible for assigning ownership of an object's occluding contour to a region which represents the "figure." Previously, we have presented a Bayesian network model which integrates multiple cues and uses belief propagation to infer local figure-ground relationships along an object's occluding contour. In this paper, we use a linear integrate-and-fire model to demonstrate how such inference mechanisms could be carried out in a biologically realistic neural circuit. The circuit maps the membrane potentials of individual neurons to log probabilities and uses recurrent connections to represent transition probabilities. The network's "perception" of figure-ground is demonstrated for several examples, including perceptually ambiguous figures, and compared qualitatively and quantitatively with human psychophysics.
Baek
Kyungim
K
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA. kb2107@columbia.edu
Sajda
Paul
P
D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D008959:Models, Neurological; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000502:physiology*; D009475:Neurons, Afferent / Q000502:physiology*; D009435:Synaptic Transmission / Q000502:physiology*; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*