Durbin R, Mitchison G
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, California 94305.
Nature. 1990 Feb 15;343(6259):644-7. doi: 10.1038/343644a0.
We argue that cortical maps, such as those for ocular dominance, orientation and retinotopic position in primary visual cortex, can be understood in terms of dimension-reducing mappings from many-dimensional parameter spaces to the surface of the cortex. The goal of these mappings is to preserve as far as possible neighbourhood relations in parameter space so that local computations in parameter space can be performed locally in the cortex. We have found that, in a simple case, certain self-organizing models generate maps that are near-optimally local, in the sense that they come close to minimizing the neuronal wiring required for local operations. When these self-organizing models are applied to the task of simultaneously mapping retinotopic position and orientation, they produce maps with orientation vortices resembling those produced in primary visual cortex. This approach also yields a new prediction, which is that the mapping of position in visual cortex will be distorted in the orientation fracture zones.
我们认为，诸如初级视觉皮层中眼优势、方向和视网膜拓扑位置等皮层图谱，可以通过从多维参数空间到皮层表面的降维映射来理解。这些映射的目标是尽可能保留参数空间中的邻域关系，以便在参数空间中进行的局部计算能够在皮层中局部执行。我们发现，在一个简单的情况下，某些自组织模型生成的图谱在局部性方面近乎最优，也就是说，它们接近最小化局部操作所需的神经元连接。当将这些自组织模型应用于同时映射视网膜拓扑位置和方向的任务时，它们会产生具有类似于初级视觉皮层中方向漩涡的图谱。这种方法还产生了一个新的预测，即视觉皮层中位置的映射在方向断裂区域会发生扭曲。
