Related papers: Real time encoding of motion: Answerable questions…
Our knowledge of the sensory world is encoded by neurons in sequences of discrete, identical pulses termed action potentials or spikes. There is persistent controversy about the extent to which the precise timing of these spikes is relevant…
To make efficient use of limited physical resources, the brain must match its coding and computational strategies to the statistical structure of input signals. An attractive testing ground for these principles is the problem of motion…
Does the brain construct an efficient representation of the sensory world? We review progress on this question, focusing on a series of experiments in the last decade which use fly vision as a model system in which theory and experiment can…
We study a wide field motion sensitive neuron in the visual system of the blowfly {\em Calliphora vicina}. By rotating the fly on a stepper motor outside in a wooded area, and along an angular motion trajectory representative of natural…
The elucidation upon fly's neuronal patterns as a link to computer graphics and memory cards I/O's, is investigated for the phenomenon by propounding a unified theory of Einstein's two known relativities. It is conclusive that flies could…
Many organisms, from flies to humans, use visual signals to estimate their motion through the world. To explore the motion estimation problem, we have constructed a camera/gyroscope system that allows us to sample, at high temporal…
Understanding a neural code requires knowledge both of the elementary symbols that transmit information and of the algorithm for translating these symbols into sensory signals or motor actions. We show that these questions can be separated:…
Estimating the direction of ambient fluid flow is key for many flying or swimming animals and robots, but can only be accomplished through indirect measurements and active control. Recent work with tethered flying insects indicates that…
We characterize the computation of motion in the fly visual system as a mapping from the high dimensional space of signals in the retinal photodetector array to the probability of generating an action potential in a motion sensitive neuron.…
According to the theory of efficient coding, sensory systems are adapted to represent natural scenes with high fidelity and at minimal metabolic cost. Testing this hypothesis for sensory structures performing non-linear computations on high…
The problem of neural coding is to understand how sequences of action potentials (spikes) are related to sensory stimuli, motor outputs, or (ultimately) thoughts and intentions. One clear question is whether the same coding rules are used…
Automated tracking of animal movement allows analyses that would not otherwise be possible by providing great quantities of data. The additional capability of tracking in realtime - with minimal latency - opens up the experimental…
The mammalian brain is a metabolically expensive device, and evolutionary pressures have presumably driven it to make productive use of its resources. For sensory areas, this concept has been expressed more formally as an optimality…
Sensory neuroscience seeks to understand how the brain encodes natural environments. However, neural coding has largely been studied using simplified stimuli. In order to assess whether the brain's coding strategy depend on the stimulus…
Decoding the direction of translating objects in front of cluttered moving backgrounds, accurately and efficiently, is still a challenging problem. In nature, lightweight and low-powered flying insects apply motion vision to detect a moving…
Many animals meander in environments and avoid collisions. How the underlying neuronal machinery can yield robust behaviour in a variety of environments remains unclear. In the fly brain, motion-sensitive neurons indicate the presence of…
Almost all neural computations involve making predictions. Whether an organism is trying to catch prey, avoid predators, or simply move through a complex environment, the data it collects through its senses can guide its actions only to the…
Understanding brain function, constructing computational models and engineering neural prosthetics require assessing two problems, namely encoding and decoding, but their relation remains controversial. For decades, the encoding problem has…
Brains adapt to the statistical structure of their input. In the visual system, local light intensities change rapidly, the variance of the intensity changes more slowly, and the dynamic range of contrast itself changes more slowly still.…
The nervous system solves a wide variety of problems in signal processing. In many cases the performance of the nervous system is so good that it apporaches fundamental physical limits, such as the limits imposed by diffraction and photon…