Related papers: What are the functions of primary visual cortex (V…

This paper investigates the online estimation of neural activity within the primary visual cortex (V1) in the framework of observability theory. We focus on a low-dimensional neural fields modeling hypercolumnar activity to describe…

The brain interprets visual information through learned regularities, a computation formalized as probabilistic inference under a prior. The visual cortex establishes priors for this inference, some delivered through established top-down…

There has been great progress in understanding of anatomical and functional microcircuitry of the primate cortex. However, the fundamental principles of cortical computation - the principles that allow the visual cortex to bind retinal…

The study of attentional processing in vision has a long and deep history. Recently, several papers have presented insightful perspectives into how the coordination of multiple attentional functions in the brain might occur. These begin…

Interpreting computations in the visual cortex as learning and inference in a generative model of the environment has received wide support both in neuroscience and cognitive science. However, hierarchical computations, a hallmark of visual…

In daily life situations, we have to perform multiple tasks given a visual stimulus, which requires task-relevant information to be transmitted through our visual system. When it is not possible to transmit all the possibly relevant…

The study of the visual system of the brain has attracted the attention and interest of many neuro-scientists, that derived computational models of some types of neuron that compose it. These findings inspired researchers in image…

Color constancy (CC) is an important ability of the human visual system to stably perceive the colors of objects despite considerable changes in the color of the light illuminating them. While increasing evidence from the field of…

A number of scientists suggested that human visual perception may emerge from image statistics, shaping efficient neural representations in early vision. In this work, a bio-inspired architecture that can accommodate several known facts in…

This Dissertation is comprised of two main projects, addressing questions in neuroscience through applications of generative modeling. Project #1 (Chapter 4) explores how neurons encode features of the external world. I combine Helmholtz's…

Visual reasoning tasks such as visual question answering (VQA) require an interplay of visual perception with reasoning about the question semantics grounded in perception. However, recent advances in this area are still primarily driven by…

Forming perceptual groups and individuating objects in visual scenes is an essential step towards visual intelligence. This ability is thought to arise in the brain from computations implemented by bottom-up, horizontal, and top-down…

Our visual system is astonishingly efficient at detecting moving objects. This process is mediated by the neurons which connect the primary visual cortex (V1) to the middle temporal (MT) area. Interestingly, since Kuffler's pioneering…

Despite their success, modern convolutional neural networks (CNNs) exhibit fundamental limitations, including data inefficiency, poor out-of-distribution generalization, and vulnerability to adversarial perturbations. These shortcomings can…

For most animal species, quick and reliable identification of visual objects is critical for survival. This applies also to rodents, which, in recent years, have become increasingly popular models of visual functions. For this reason in…

The human visual system uses two parallel pathways for spatial processing and object recognition. In contrast, computer vision systems tend to use a single feedforward pathway, rendering them less robust, adaptive, or efficient than human…

In this paper we present a new model for the generation of orientation preference maps in the primary visual cortex (V1), considering both orientation and scale features. First we undertake to model the functional architecture of V1 by…

Human vision possesses a special type of visual processing systems called peripheral vision. Partitioning the entire visual field into multiple contour regions based on the distance to the center of our gaze, the peripheral vision provides…

This is a follow-up tutorial article of [17] and [16], in this paper, we will introduce several important cognitive functions of the brain. Brain cognitive functions are the mental processes that allow us to receive, select, store,…

The human brain is adept at solving difficult high-level visual processing problems such as image interpretation and object recognition in natural scenes. Over the past few years neuroscientists have made remarkable progress in…