title: Evolution of neural computations: Mantis shrimp and human color decoding.
abstract: Mantis shrimp and primates both possess good color vision, but the neural implementation in the two species is very different, a reflection of the largely unrelated evolutionary lineages of these creatures. Mantis shrimp have scanning compound eyes with 12 classes of photoreceptors, and have evolved a system to decode color information at the front-end of the sensory stream. Primates have image-focusing eyes with three classes of cones, and decode color further along the visual-processing hierarchy. Despite these differences, we report a fascinating parallel between the computational strategies at the color-decoding stage in the brains of stomatopods and primates. Both species appear to use narrowly tuned cells that support interval decoding color identification.
authors.affiliation: Graduate Center for Vision Research, State University of New York, New York; e-mail: qz@sunyopt.edu.
authors.forename: Qasim
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zaidi
authors.affiliation: Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia; e-mail: h.thoen@uq.edu.au.
authors.forename: Justin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Marshall
authors.affiliation: Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia; e-mail: justin.marshall@uq.edu.au.
authors.forename: Hanne
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Thoen
authors.affiliation: Neuroscience Program, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts; e-mail: bconway@wellesley.edu.
authors.forename: Bevil R
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Conway
keywords: IT cortex; color decoding; mantis shrimp; photoreceptors; primate color vision; tuning curves; winner-take-all