Toward More Biologically Realistic Functional Maps in Primary Visual Cortex

Lars Crawford Wyeth Bair

Functional Maps
Orientation, spatial frequency, ocular dominance etc. Overlain on primary visual cortex Each cell has preference to specific combination of stimulus parameters These are in cat, but similar in monkey
Swindale, N. V., Shoham, D., Grinvald, A., Bonhoeffer, T., & Hubener, M. (January 01, 2000). Visual cortex maps are optimized for uniform coverage. Nature Neuroscience, 3,8, 822-6.

Initial Model & Motivation

Original models (written by Wyeth Bair) capture the essence of functional map layout but are quite rigid. Goal: add noise to the maps to make them look more like biology.

Method
Apply a series of Gabor filters to the map to warp it.
Generate Gabor equation
1 + a*cos(sf*x + ph) * exp(x^2/(2*sigma^2)) Paramters: amplitude, phase, standard deviation, (x,y) center of warp

Integrate it to determine map function Determine polar coordinates of each cortical point (x,y), pass r to map function to determine r Revert back to Cartesian to find (x,y) and fill new map location (x,y) with value from old map location (x,y)

Grid Example

Warped Functional Maps, n = 20

Future Directions
Test what effect this noise has on the computations V1 carries out, specifically with respect to functional map coverage.