IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v7y2016i1d10.1038_ncomms13208.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Spontaneous emergence of fast attractor dynamics in a model of developing primary visual cortex

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Miconi

    (The Neurosciences Institute)

  • Jeffrey L. McKinstry

    (The Neurosciences Institute
    Present address: IBM Research-Almaden, San Jose, California 95120, USA)

  • Gerald M. Edelman

    (The Neurosciences Institute)

Abstract

Recent evidence suggests that neurons in primary sensory cortex arrange into competitive groups, representing stimuli by their joint activity rather than as independent feature analysers. A possible explanation for these results is that sensory cortex implements attractor dynamics, although this proposal remains controversial. Here we report that fast attractor dynamics emerge naturally in a computational model of a patch of primary visual cortex endowed with realistic plasticity (at both feedforward and lateral synapses) and mutual inhibition. When exposed to natural images (but not random pixels), the model spontaneously arranges into competitive groups of reciprocally connected, similarly tuned neurons, while developing realistic, orientation-selective receptive fields. Importantly, the same groups are observed in both stimulus-evoked and spontaneous (stimulus-absent) activity. The resulting network is inhibition-stabilized and exhibits fast, non-persistent attractor dynamics. Our results suggest that realistic plasticity, mutual inhibition and natural stimuli are jointly necessary and sufficient to generate attractor dynamics in primary sensory cortex.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Miconi & Jeffrey L. McKinstry & Gerald M. Edelman, 2016. "Spontaneous emergence of fast attractor dynamics in a model of developing primary visual cortex," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 7(1), pages 1-10, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms13208
    DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13208
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13208
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/ncomms13208?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vahid Rostami & Thomas Rost & Felix Johannes Schmitt & Sacha Jennifer Albada & Alexa Riehle & Martin Paul Nawrot, 2024. "Spiking attractor model of motor cortex explains modulation of neural and behavioral variability by prior target information," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-17, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms13208. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.