CONNECTIONIST HYPOTHESIS ABOUT AN ONTOGENETICDEVELOPMENT OF CONCEPTUALLY-DRIVEN CORTICALANISOTROPY

摘要

The physiological structure of the striate cortex is composed of neural columns sensitiveto different orientations [9] with an over-representation of cardinal orientations [13]. Asan explanation, it seems that statistics of the power spectra of natural images have shownthat vertical and horizontal orientations are most present in our visual environment [3, 12,20]. The over-representation of horizontal and vertical orientation columns in visualcortex was interpreted as an adaptation of the visual system to this greater amount ofhorizontal and vertical information. The present study is an attempt to confirm that theinformation about these two orientations is quantitatively more available in theenvironment, but also that cardinal information is qualitatively more efficient than otherorientations for a connectionist model of categorisation.