Akihiro Eguchi

Simon M Stringer

BMC Neuroscience

PubMed

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POSTER PRESENTATION Open Access
Computational modeling of the development of
detailed facial representations along ventral
pathway
Akihiro Eguchi*, Simon M Stringer
From The Twenty Third Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting: CNS*2014
Québec City, Canada. 26-31 July 2014
Experimental studies have shown that neurons at an inter-
mediate stage of the primate ventral visual pathway encode
the conformation and spatial relations of facial features [1],
while neurons in the later stages are selective to the full
face [2]. In this study, we investigate how these cell firing
properties may develop through visually-guided learning.
* Correspondence: akihiro.eguchi@psy.ox.ac.uk
Oxford Centre for theoretical neuroscience and artificial intelligence,
University of Oxford, OX1 3UD, UK
Figure 1 A. Stylized image of the 4 layer network model. B. Gabor filter inputs which had strong connectivity through the layers to full face
selective neuron (left) Firing activity plots of cells, of which each encodes specific facial identity or expression, across 20 x 20 morphs of distinct
identities and expressions. C. Gabor filters inputs of facial feature selective neurons and firing activity plots of the neurons across a series of
presentations of different facial features within 10 distinct faces.
Eguchi and Stringer BMC Neuroscience 2014, 15(Suppl 1):P38
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2202/15/S1/P38
© 2014 Eguchi and Stringer; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver
(http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
A hierarchical neural network model of the primate’s
ventral visual pathway is trained by presenting many ran-
domly generated faces to the hierarchical competitive
neural network while a local learning rule modifies the
strengths of the synaptic connections between successive
layers [3] (Figure 1A). After training, the model is found
to have developed the experimentally observed cell firing
properties. In particular, we have demonstrated how the
primate brain learns to represent facial expression inde-
pendently of facial identity as reported in [4] (Figure 1B).
We have also shown how the visual system forms separate
representations of facial features such as the eyes, nose
and mouth (Figure 1C) as well as representations of spatial
relationships between these facial features, as have been
reported in single unit recording studies [1]. Therefore,
this research makes an important contribution to under-
standing visual processing in the primate brain.
Published: 21 July 2014
References
1. Freiwald WA, Tsao DY, Livingstone MS: A face feature space in the
macaque temporal lobe. Nat Neurosci 2009, 12:1187-1196.
2. Tsao DY, Freiwald WA, Tootell RBH, Livingstone MS: A cortical region
consisting entirely of face-selective cells. Science 2006, 311:670-674.
3. Tromans JM, Harris M, Stringer SM: A Computational Model of the
Development of Separate Representations of Facial Identity and
Expression in the Primate Visual System. PLoS ONE 2011, 6:e25616.
4. Hasselmo ME, Rolls ET, Baylis GC: The role of expression and identity in
the face-selective responses of neurons in the temporal visual cortex of
the monkey. Behavioural Brain Research 1989, 32:203-218.
doi:10.1186/1471-2202-15-S1-P38
Cite this article as: Eguchi and Stringer: Computational modeling of the
development of detailed facial representations along ventral pathway.
BMC Neuroscience 2014 15(Suppl 1):P38.
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Eguchi and Stringer BMC Neuroscience 2014, 15(Suppl 1):P38
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2202/15/S1/P38
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Computational modeling of the development of detailed facial representations along ventral pathway

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Computational modeling of the development of detailed facial representations along ventral pathway

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