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Complex cells as cortically amplified simple cells

Abstract

The majority of synapses in primary visual cortex mediate excitation between nearby neurons, yet the role of local recurrent connections in visual processing remains unclear. We propose that these connections are responsible for the spatial-phase invariance of complex-cell responses. In a network model with selective cortical amplification, neurons exhibit simple-cell responses when recurrent connections are weak and complex-cell responses when they are strong, suggesting that simple and complex cells are the low- and high-gain limits of the same basic cortical circuit. Given the ubiquity of invariant responses in cognitive processing, the recurrent mechanism we propose for complex cells may be widely applicable.

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Figure 2: The effects of recurrent input on model responses.
Figure 1: The architecture of the recurrent model.
Figure 4: At high gain, the model cells are not selective for spatial phase but retain different selectivities for spatial frequency.
Figure 3: The relative modulation of the response of the model cells to a drifting 2-Hz grating as a function of g/gmax, the strength of the recurrent connections relative to the maximum stable strength.
Figure 5: Four representative neurons from a model network with a mixture of simple and complex cells.
Figure 6: Temporal-frequency tuning curves of F2 (the amplitude of the response at twice the stimulus frequency) and F0 (the amplitude of the unmodulated response) components in response to counterphase and drifting gratings.
Figure 7: Measures of complexity vary as a function of temporal frequency.

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Acknowledgements

Research supported by the Sloan Center for Theoretical Neurobiology at Brandeis University, the National Science Foundation (DMS-95-03261), the W.M. Keck Foundation, the National Eye Institute (EY-11116) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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Correspondence to L.F. Abbott.

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Chance, F., Nelson, S. & Abbott, L. Complex cells as cortically amplified simple cells. Nat Neurosci 2, 277–282 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/6381

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