Pooling strategies in V1 can account for the functional and structural diversity across species

Victor Boutin, Angelo Franciosini, Frédéric Chavane, Laurent U. Perrinet

Abstract: Author summary Cortical orientation maps are among the most fascinating structures observed in higher mammals’ brains: In such retinotopic maps, preferred orientations in the cortical surface are clustered such that similar orientations activate neighboring cells, and orientation preference changes gradually along the cortical surface. However, the computational advantage brought by these structures remains unclear, as some species (rodents and lagomorphs) completely lack orientation maps. In this study, we introduce a computational model that links the presence of orientation maps to a class of nonlinear neurons called complex cells. In particular, we propose that the presence or absence orientation maps results from the diversity of strategies employed by different species to generate invariance to complex natural stimuli. These results have important applications for our understanding of how diverse biological organisms can achieve a given function (here low level-vision) and also for the elaboration of novel mechanisms in artificial neural network architectures such as convolution neural networks.