Scale Independence in the Visual System

We briefly present some aspects of information processing in the mammalian visual system. The chapter focuses on the problem of scale-independent object recognition. We provide a simple model, based on spiking neurons that make use of shunting inhibition in order to optimally select their driving afferent inputs. The model is able to resist to some degree to scale changes of the stimulus. We discuss possible mechanisms that the brain could use to achieve invariant object recognition and correlate our model with biophysical evidence.

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