Variance predicts salience in central sensory processing

Abstract
Article and author information
Metrics

Abstract

Information processing in the sensory periphery is shaped by natural stimulus statistics. In the periphery, a transmission bottleneck constrains performance; thus efficient coding implies that natural signal components with a predictably wider range should be compressed. In a different regime - when sampling limitations constrain performance - efficient coding implies that more resources should be allocated to informative features that are more variable. We propose that this regime is relevant for sensory cortex when it extracts complex features from limited numbers of sensory samples. To test this prediction, we use central visual processing as a model: we show that visual sensitivity for local multi-point spatial correlations, described by dozens of independently-measured parameters, can be quantitatively predicted from the structure of natural images. This suggests that efficient coding applies centrally, where it extends to higher-order sensory features and operates in a regime in which sensitivity increases with feature variability.

Article and author information

Author details

Ann M Hermundstad

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States

For correspondence
annherm@physics.upenn.edu

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
John J Briguglio

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Mary M Conte

Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Jonathan D Victor

Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Vijay Balasubramanian

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Gašper Tkačik

Institute of Science and Technology Austria, Klosterneuburg, Austria

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Ethics

Human subjects: The human subjects research (visual psychophysics) was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Weill Cornell Medical College, and was in accord with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki. Informed consent was obtained from each subject prior to the experimental sessions, and consent to publish was obtained from Mary Conte (MC), the one subject who is potentially identifiable by the initials since she is also an author.

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.