Extraction of Coherent Information from Non-Overlapping Receptive Fields

It has been suggested that long-range lateral connections in the cortex play a contextual role in that they modulate the gain of the response to primary receptive field input. In the first part of this paper I show that a network with a set of such pre-wired connections has a short-term dynamics that enhances and stabilizes coherent information defined across multiple, non-overlapping receptive fields. In the second part, I suggest a simple Hebbian rule that can develop the required pattern of synaptic strengths and describe two simulations where the networks discover information that is defined only by its coherence across receptive fields

Extraction of Coherent Information from Non-Overlapping Receptive Fields

. It has been suggested that long-range lateral connections in the cortex play a contextual role in that they modulate the gain of the response to primary receptive field input. In the first part of this paper I show that a network with a set of such pre-wired connections has a shortterm dynamics that enhances and stabilizes coherent information defined across multiple, non-overlapping receptive fields. In the second part, I suggest a simple Hebbian rule that can develop the required pattern of synaptic strengths and describe two simulations where the networks discover information that is defined only by its coherence across receptive fields. 1 A contextual role for long-range lateral connections Neurophysiological and pharmacological experiments have indicated that longrange lateral connections in the cortex have a modulatory effect on the postsynaptic cell [3]. Their action could be described by a mechanism that increases or decreases the gain of the cell response to the receptive f..