title: The impact of the lateral geniculate nucleus and corticogeniculate interactions on efficient coding and higher-order visual object processing.
abstract: Principles of efficient coding suggest that the peripheral units of any sensory processing system are designed for efficient coding. The function of the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) as an early stage in the visual system is not well understood. Some findings indicate that similar to the retina that decorrelates input signals spatially, the LGN tends to perform a temporal decorrelation. There is evidence suggesting that corticogeniculate connections may account for this decorrelation in the LGN. In this study, we propose a computational model based on biological evidence reported by Wang et al. (2006), who demonstrated that the influence pattern of V1 feedback is phase-reversed. The output of our model shows how corticogeniculate connections decorrelate LGN responses and make an efficient representation. We evaluated our model using criteria that have previously been tested on LGN neurons through cell recording experiments, including sparseness, entropy, power spectra, and information transfer. We also considered the role of the LGN in higher-order visual object processing, comparing the categorization performance of human subjects with a cortical object recognition model in the presence and absence of our LGN input-stage model. Our results show that the new model that considers the role of the LGN, more closely follows the categorization performance of human subjects.
authors.affiliation: Brain & Intelligent Systems Research Lab (BISLAB), Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University, P.O. Box 16785-163, Tehran, Iran; School of Cognitive Sciences (SCS), Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Niavaran, P.O. Box 19395-5746, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Sajjad
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zabbah
authors.affiliation: Brain & Intelligent Systems Research Lab (BISLAB), Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University, P.O. Box 16785-163, Tehran, Iran; School of Cognitive Sciences (SCS), Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Niavaran, P.O. Box 19395-5746, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Karim
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Rajaei
authors.affiliation: Brain & Intelligent Systems Research Lab (BISLAB), Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University, P.O. Box 16785-163, Tehran, Iran; School of Cognitive Sciences (SCS), Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Niavaran, P.O. Box 19395-5746, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Amin
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mirzaei
authors.affiliation: Brain & Intelligent Systems Research Lab (BISLAB), Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University, P.O. Box 16785-163, Tehran, Iran; School of Cognitive Sciences (SCS), Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Niavaran, P.O. Box 19395-5746, Tehran, Iran. Electronic address: ebrahimpour@ipm.ir.
authors.forename: Reza
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ebrahimpour
authors.affiliation: MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK.
authors.forename: Seyed-Mahdi
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Khaligh-Razavi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D056228:Feedback, Sensory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005556:Form Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D005829:Geniculate Bodies / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011601:Psychophysics; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Entropy; Object recognition; Sparseness; Temporal auto correlation function; Temporal decorrelation; Temporal power spectrum