Expansion and contraction of resource allocation in sensory bottlenecks
- University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
Abstract
Topographic sensory representations often do not scale proportionally to the size of their input regions, with some expanded and others contracted. In vision, the foveal representation is magnified cortically, as are the fingertips in touch. What principles drive this allocation, and how should receptor density, e.g. the high innervation of the fovea or the fingertips, and stimulus statistics, e.g. the higher contact frequencies on the fingertips, contribute? Building on work in efficient coding, we address this problem using linear models that optimally decorrelate the sensory signals. We introduce a sensory bottleneck to impose constraints on resource allocation and derive the optimal neural allocation. We find that bottleneck width is a crucial factor in resource allocation, inducing either expansion or contraction. Both receptor density and stimulus statistics affect allocation and jointly determine convergence for wider bottlenecks. Furthermore, we show a close match between the predicted and empirical cortical allocations in a well-studied model system, the star-nosed mole. Overall, our results suggest that the strength of cortical magnification depends on resource limits.
Data availability
No data was generated for this study. All equations and model parameters are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Additionally, code implementing the model equations has been made available on Github at https://github.com/lauraredmondson/expansion_contraction_sensory_bottlenecks (see also Methods section in manuscript).
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Wellcome Trust (209998/Z/17/Z)
- Hannes P Saal
European Commission (HBP-SGA2,785907)
- Alejandro Jiménez Rodríguez
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2022, Edmondson et al.
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.
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Expansion and contraction of resource allocation in sensory bottlenecks
eLife 11:e70777.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.70777
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