Neural correlates of sparse coding and dimensionality reduction
Fig 2
(A) Sensory stimuli in the environment, such as an image of an anteater, display significant statistical structure. For example, the luminance value of nearby pixels in the image is significantly correlated, an effect that exists even for nonadjacent pixels (inspired by [27]). Neural systems can improve their coding efficiency by accounting for and reducing such information redundancy. (B) For a given distribution of sensory characteristics in the world (top), a neuron's information capacity is maximized when all response levels are used with equal frequency (inspired by [29]). Intervals between each response level encompass an equal area under the intensity distribution, so each state is used with equal frequency.