2005/05/02 by William Bialek, Bialek, William, Rob R. de Ruyter van Steveninck +1 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Neuroscience · #FOS: Biological sciences #Neural dynamics and brain function #Neurobiology and Insect Physiology Research #Neurons and Cognition (q-bio.NC) #Visual perception and processing mechanisms #q-bio.NC
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.q-bio/0505003
18 pages, 11 figures, some in color
arxiv created 2005/05/02 · openalex publication_date 2005/05/02 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We characterize the computation of motion in the fly visual system as a mapping from the high dimensional space of signals in the retinal photodetector array to the probability of generating an action potential in a motion sensitive neuron. Our approach to this problem identifies a low dimensional subspace of signals within which the neuron is most sensitive, and then samples this subspace to visualize the nonlinear structure of the mapping. The results illustrate the computational strategies predicted for a system that makes optimal motion estimates given the physical noise sources in the detector array. More generally, the hypothesis that neurons are sensitive to low dimensional subspaces of their inputs formalizes the intuitive notion of feature selectivity and suggests a strategy for characterizing the neural processing of complex, naturalistic sensory inputs.