title: Propagation of photon noise and information transfer in visual motion detection.
abstract: The extraction of the direction of motion from the time varying retinal images is one of the most basic tasks any visual system is confronted with. However, retinal images are severely corrupted by photon noise, in particular at low light levels, thus limiting the performance of motion detection mechanisms of what sort so ever. Here, we study how photon noise propagates through an array of Reichardt-type motion detectors that are commonly believed to underlie fly motion vision. We provide closed-form analytical expressions of the signal and noise spectra at the output of such a motion detector array. We find that Reichardt detectors reveal favorable noise suppression in the frequency range where most of the signal power resides. Most notably, due to inherent adaptive properties, the transmitted information about stimulus velocity remains nearly constant over a large range of velocity entropies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Systems and Computational Neuroscience, Max-Planck-Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried, Germany.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Borst
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D016477:Artifacts; D004175:Diptera / Q000502:physiology*; D005583:Fourier Analysis; D023421:Models, Animal; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology* / Q000528:radiation effects; D017785:Photons; D017956:Photoreceptor Cells, Invertebrate / Q000502:physiology* / Q000528:radiation effects; D009435:Synaptic Transmission / Q000502:physiology; D014785:Vision, Ocular / Q000502:physiology* / Q000528:radiation effects; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000502:physiology* / Q000528:radiation effects