@inproceedings{
zhong2024visual,
title={Visual Pinwheel Center Act as Geometric Saliency Detector},
author={Haixin Zhong and Mingyi Huang and Wei P Dai and Haoyu Wang and Anna Wang Roe and yuguo yu},
booktitle={The Thirty-eighth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems},
year={2024},
url={https://openreview.net/forum?id=LPkcoml66W}
}
During natural evolution, the primary visual cortex (V1) of lower mammals typically forms salt-and-pepper organizations, while higher mammals and primates develop pinwheel structures with distinct topological properties. Despite the general belief that V1 neurons primarily serve as edge detectors, the functional advantages of pinwheel structures over salt-and-peppers are not well recognized. To this end, we propose a two-dimensional self-evolving spiking neural network that integrates Hebbian-like plasticity and empirical morphological data. Through extensive exposure to image data, our network evolves from salt-and-peppers to pinwheel structures, with neurons becoming localized bandpass filters responsive to various orientations. This transformation is accompanied by an increase in visual field overlap. Our findings indicate that neurons in pinwheel centers (PCs) respond more effectively to complex spatial textures in natural images, exhibiting stronger and quicker responses than those in salt-and-pepper organizations. PCs act as first-order stage processors with heightened sensitivity and reduced latency to intricate contours, while adjacent iso-orientation domains serve as second-order stage processors that refine edge representations for clearer perception. This study presents the first theoretical evidence that pinwheel structures function as crucial detectors of spatial contour saliency in the visual cortex.
Visual Pinwheel Center Act as Geometric Saliency Detector
Haixin Zhong Mingyi Huang Wei P Dai Haoyu Wang Anna Wang Roe yuguo yu