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A parsimonious computational model of visual target position encoding in the superior colliculus

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Abstract

The superior colliculus (SC) is a brainstem structure at the crossroad of multiple functional pathways. Several neurophysiological studies suggest that the population of active neurons in the SC encodes the location of a visual target to foveate, pursue or attend to. Although extensive research has been carried out on computational modeling, most of the reported models are often based on complex mechanisms and explain a limited number of experimental results. This suggests that a key aspect may have been overlooked in the design of previous computational models. After a careful study of the literature, we hypothesized that the representation of the whole retinal stimulus (not only its center) might play an important role in the dynamics of SC activity. To test this hypothesis, we designed a model of the SC which is built upon three well-accepted principles: the log-polar representation of the visual field onto the SC, the interplay between a center excitation and a surround inhibition and a simple neuronal dynamics, like the one proposed by the dynamic neural field theory. Results show that the retinotopic organization of the collicular activity conveys an implicit computation that deeply impacts the target selection process.

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Notes

  1. i.e. activation = activation \(\times \) (\(1+\mathcal {N}(0,0.01)\))

  2. We do not consider the deformation of the projection from the visual field to the retina since we suppose the transformation used accounts already for that, see Fig 1 in Ottes et al. (1986) . Polar coordinates in \(\mathcal R\) are equivalent to polar coordinates in \(\mathcal V\),

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut de Neurobiologie de la Méditerrantée, INSERM, UMR 901, Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France

    Wahiba Taouali

  2. Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone, CNRS, UMR 7289, Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France

    Laurent Goffart

  3. INRIA Bordeaux Sud-West, Talence, France

    Frédéric Alexandre & Nicolas P. Rougier

  4. LaBRI, Université de Bordeaux, Bordeaux INP, UMR 5800, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Talence, France

    Frédéric Alexandre & Nicolas P. Rougier

  5. Institut des Maladies Neurodégénératives, Université de Bordeaux, UMR 5293, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Bordeaux, France

    Frédéric Alexandre & Nicolas P. Rougier

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  1. Wahiba Taouali
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  2. Laurent Goffart
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  4. Nicolas P. Rougier
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Correspondence to Wahiba Taouali.

Additional information

This work was supported by the Institut National de la Recherche en Informatique et Automatique (INRIA), the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Agence Nationale de la Recherche : Grants MAPS (W.T., N.R., F.A. and L.G.) and VISAFIX (LG).

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Taouali, W., Goffart, L., Alexandre, F. et al. A parsimonious computational model of visual target position encoding in the superior colliculus. Biol Cybern 109, 549–559 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-015-0660-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-015-0660-8

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