2012/04/20 by Ralph L. Stoop, Victor Saase, Stoop, Ralph L. +7
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Physics and Astronomy · #Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Neurons and Cognition (q-bio.NC) #physics.bio-ph #q-bio.NC
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1204.4558
arxiv created 2012/04/20 · arxiv updated 2012/04/23
It is widely believed that the particular wiring observed within cortical columns boosts neural computation. We use rewiring of neural networks performing real-world cognitive tasks to study the validity of this argument. In a vast survey of wirings within the column we detect, however, no traces of the proposed effect. It is on the mesoscopic inter-columnar scale that the existence of columns - largely irrespective of their inner organization - enhances the speed of information transfer and minimizes the total wiring length required to bind the distributed columnar computations towards spatio-temporally coherent results.