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Justification?

Posted by derekjames on 07 Jun 2008 at 15:54 GMT

This sort of rapid processing presumably depends on the ability of the visual system to learn to recognize familiar visual forms in an unsupervised manner.
http://ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.0030031#article1.body1.sec1.p1

Just because such processing is extremely fast, why does this necessarily suggest that it is learned?

RE: Justification?

tmasquelier replied to derekjames on 09 Jun 2008 at 15:47 GMT

Oh, there's no such implication.

Processing is extremely fast, suggesting most of the computation is done with at most one spike per neuron.

In addition, we have reasons to believe that much of the wiring in the visual system is learnt (for eg ocular dominance in cat (Hubel&Wiesel,J Physiol,1970). In congenitally blind human, the areas that would have become visual are involved in other functions such as audition (Ofan&Zohary,Cereb Cortex,2007)).

Our claim is that STDP is a good candidate to account for this wiring development, because it can lead to the development of highly selective response even when each neuron only gets to fire one spike.

I hope this helps,

Timothee Masquelier