27,577 research outputs found
Egocentric Perception using a Biologically Inspired Software Retina Integrated with a Deep CNN
We presented the concept of of a software retina, capable
of significant visual data reduction in combination with
scale and rotation invariance, for applications in egocentric
and robot vision at the first EPIC workshop in Amsterdam
[9]. Our method is based on the mammalian retino-cortical
transform: a mapping between a pseudo-randomly tessellated
retina model (used to sample an input image) and a
CNN. The aim of this first pilot study is to demonstrate a
functional retina-integrated CNN implementation and this
produced the following results: a network using the full
retino-cortical transform yielded an F1 score of 0.80 on a
test set during a 4-way classification task, while an identical
network not using the proposed method yielded an F1
score of 0.86 on the same task. On a 40K node retina the
method reduced the visual data bye×7, the input data to the
CNN by 40% and the number of CNN training epochs by
36%. These results demonstrate the viability of our method
and hint at the potential of exploiting functional traits of
natural vision systems in CNNs. In addition, to the above
study, we present further recent developments in porting
the retina to an Apple iPhone, an implementation in CUDA
C for NVIDIA GPU platforms and extensions of the retina
model we have adopted
Laminar fMRI: applications for cognitive neuroscience
The cortex is a massively recurrent network, characterized by feedforward and feedback connections between brain areas as well as lateral connections within an area. Feedforward, horizontal and feedback responses largely activate separate layers of a cortical unit, meaning they can be dissociated by lamina-resolved neurophysiological techniques. Such techniques are invasive and are therefore rarely used in humans. However, recent developments in high spatial resolution fMRI allow for non-invasive, in vivo measurements of brain responses specific to separate cortical layers. This provides an important opportunity to dissociate between feedforward and feedback brain responses, and investigate communication between brain areas at a more fine- grained level than previously possible in the human species. In this review, we highlight recent studies that successfully used laminar fMRI to isolate layer-specific feedback responses in human sensory cortex. In addition, we review several areas of cognitive neuroscience that stand to benefit from this new technological development, highlighting contemporary hypotheses that yield testable predictions for laminar fMRI. We hope to encourage researchers with the opportunity to embrace this development in fMRI research, as we expect that many future advancements in our current understanding of human brain function will be gained from measuring lamina-specific brain responses
Colour Constancy: Biologically-inspired Contrast Variant Pooling Mechanism
Pooling is a ubiquitous operation in image processing algorithms that allows
for higher-level processes to collect relevant low-level features from a region
of interest. Currently, max-pooling is one of the most commonly used operators
in the computational literature. However, it can lack robustness to outliers
due to the fact that it relies merely on the peak of a function. Pooling
mechanisms are also present in the primate visual cortex where neurons of
higher cortical areas pool signals from lower ones. The receptive fields of
these neurons have been shown to vary according to the contrast by aggregating
signals over a larger region in the presence of low contrast stimuli. We
hypothesise that this contrast-variant-pooling mechanism can address some of
the shortcomings of max-pooling. We modelled this contrast variation through a
histogram clipping in which the percentage of pooled signal is inversely
proportional to the local contrast of an image. We tested our hypothesis by
applying it to the phenomenon of colour constancy where a number of popular
algorithms utilise a max-pooling step (e.g. White-Patch, Grey-Edge and
Double-Opponency). For each of these methods, we investigated the consequences
of replacing their original max-pooling by the proposed
contrast-variant-pooling. Our experiments on three colour constancy benchmark
datasets suggest that previous results can significantly improve by adopting a
contrast-variant-pooling mechanism
Cortical spatio-temporal dimensionality reduction for visual grouping
The visual systems of many mammals, including humans, is able to integrate
the geometric information of visual stimuli and to perform cognitive tasks
already at the first stages of the cortical processing. This is thought to be
the result of a combination of mechanisms, which include feature extraction at
single cell level and geometric processing by means of cells connectivity. We
present a geometric model of such connectivities in the space of detected
features associated to spatio-temporal visual stimuli, and show how they can be
used to obtain low-level object segmentation. The main idea is that of defining
a spectral clustering procedure with anisotropic affinities over datasets
consisting of embeddings of the visual stimuli into higher dimensional spaces.
Neural plausibility of the proposed arguments will be discussed
The What-And-Where Filter: A Spatial Mapping Neural Network for Object Recognition and Image Understanding
The What-and-Where filter forms part of a neural network architecture for spatial mapping, object recognition, and image understanding. The Where fllter responds to an image figure that has been separated from its background. It generates a spatial map whose cell activations simultaneously represent the position, orientation, ancl size of all tbe figures in a scene (where they are). This spatial map may he used to direct spatially localized attention to these image features. A multiscale array of oriented detectors, followed by competitve and interpolative interactions between position, orientation, and size scales, is used to define the Where filter. This analysis discloses several issues that need to be dealt with by a spatial mapping system that is based upon oriented filters, such as the role of cliff filters with and without normalization, the double peak problem of maximum orientation across size scale, and the different self-similar interpolation properties across orientation than across size scale. Several computationally efficient Where filters are proposed. The Where filter rnay be used for parallel transformation of multiple image figures into invariant representations that are insensitive to the figures' original position, orientation, and size. These invariant figural representations form part of a system devoted to attentive object learning and recognition (what it is). Unlike some alternative models where serial search for a target occurs, a What and Where representation can he used to rapidly search in parallel for a desired target in a scene. Such a representation can also be used to learn multidimensional representations of objects and their spatial relationships for purposes of image understanding. The What-and-Where filter is inspired by neurobiological data showing that a Where processing stream in the cerebral cortex is used for attentive spatial localization and orientation, whereas a What processing stream is used for attentive object learning and recognition.Advanced Research Projects Agency (ONR-N00014-92-J-4015, AFOSR 90-0083); British Petroleum (89-A-1204); National Science Foundation (IRI-90-00530, Graduate Fellowship); Office of Naval Research (N00014-91-J-4100, N00014-95-1-0409, N00014-95-1-0657); Air Force Office of Scientific Research (F49620-92-J-0499, F49620-92-J-0334
Adaptive Resonance: An Emerging Neural Theory of Cognition
Adaptive resonance is a theory of cognitive information processing which has been realized as a family of neural network models. In recent years, these models have evolved to incorporate new capabilities in the cognitive, neural, computational, and technological domains. Minimal models provide a conceptual framework, for formulating questions about the nature of cognition; an architectural framework, for mapping cognitive functions to cortical regions; a semantic framework, for precisely defining terms; and a computational framework, for testing hypotheses. These systems are here exemplified by the distributed ART (dART) model, which generalizes localist ART systems to allow arbitrarily distributed code representations, while retaining basic capabilities such as stable fast learning and scalability. Since each component is placed in the context of a unified real-time system, analysis can move from the level of neural processes, including learning laws and rules of synaptic transmission, to cognitive processes, including attention and consciousness. Local design is driven by global functional constraints, with each network synthesizing a dynamic balance of opposing tendencies. The self-contained working ART and dART models can also be transferred to technology, in areas that include remote sensing, sensor fusion, and content-addressable information retrieval from large databases.Office of Naval Research and the defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (N00014-95-1-0409, N00014-1-95-0657); National Institutes of Health (20-316-4304-5
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