Modelling the Grid-like Encoding of Visual Space in Primates

Jochen Kerdels, Gabriele Peters

2016

Abstract

Several regions of the mammalian brain contain neurons that exhibit grid-like firing patterns. The most prominent example of such neurons are grid cells in the entorhinal cortex (EC) whose activity correlates with the animal's location. Correspondingly, contemporary models of grid cells interpret this firing behavior as a specialized, functional part within a system for orientation and navigation. However, Killian et al. report on neurons in the primate EC that show similar, grid-like firing patterns but encode gaze-positions in the field of view instead of locations in the environment. We hypothesized that the phenomenon of grid-like firing patterns may not be restricted to navigational tasks and may be related to a more general, underlying information processing scheme. To explore this idea, we developed a grid cell model based on the recursive growing neural gas (RGNG) algorithm that expresses this notion. Here we show that our grid cell model can -- in contrast to established grid cell models -- also describe the observations of Killian et al. and we outline the general conditions under which we would expect neurons to exhibit grid-like activity patterns in response to input signals independent of a presumed, functional task of the neurons.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Kerdels J. and Peters G. (2016). Modelling the Grid-like Encoding of Visual Space in Primates . In Proceedings of the 8th International Joint Conference on Computational Intelligence - Volume 3: NCTA, (IJCCI 2016) ISBN 978-989-758-201-1, pages 42-49. DOI: 10.5220/0006045500420049

in Bibtex Style

@conference{ncta16,
author={Jochen Kerdels and Gabriele Peters},
title={Modelling the Grid-like Encoding of Visual Space in Primates},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 8th International Joint Conference on Computational Intelligence - Volume 3: NCTA, (IJCCI 2016)},
year={2016},
pages={42-49},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006045500420049},
isbn={978-989-758-201-1},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 8th International Joint Conference on Computational Intelligence - Volume 3: NCTA, (IJCCI 2016)
TI - Modelling the Grid-like Encoding of Visual Space in Primates
SN - 978-989-758-201-1
AU - Kerdels J.
AU - Peters G.
PY - 2016
SP - 42
EP - 49
DO - 10.5220/0006045500420049