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The Journal of Neuroscience, June 15, 2002, 22(12):5118-5128
How Noise Contributes to Contrast Invariance of Orientation
Tuning in Cat Visual Cortex
D.
Hansel1, 2 and
C.
van Vreeswijk1
1 Laboratoire de Neurophysique et Physiologie du
Système Moteur (EP 1848 Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique), Université René Descartes, 75270 Paris cedex
06, France, and 2 Center for Neural Computation, Hebrew
University, Jerusalem 91904, Israel
The width of the orientation tuning curves of the spike response of
neurons in V1 is invariant to contrast. This property constrains the
possible mechanisms underlying orientation selectivity. It has been
suggested that noise circumvents the iceberg effect that would prevent
contrast invariance in the purely feedforward mechanism. Here we
investigate systematically how noise contributes to the contrast
invariance of orientation tuning curves in V1. We study three models of
increasing complexity: a simple threshold-linear firing rate model, a
leaky integrate-and-fire model, and a conductance-based model. We show
that the noise transmutes the threshold nonlinearity of the
input-output relationships into an approximate power law without a
threshold within some firing rate range. This implies that, under
certain conditions which are derived here, the tuning of the neuron
output is approximately contrast invariant. In particular we show that
this mechanism for contrast invariance requires that the neuron firing
rate must not be too large and that increasing or lowering the contrast
too much destroys this invariance. We also show that if this mechanism
operates in V1, the spike response, R, and average voltage
response V of the neurons in V1 should vary with the
contrast, C, according to R(C)  V(C) . The exponent  can be estimated from the
amount by which the spike tuning curve is sharpened with respect to the
voltage tuning curves of the neurons. This prediction does not depend
on the specifics of the model and can be tested experimentally.
Key words:
orientation selectivity; primary visual cortex; V1; contrast invariance; noise; integrate-and-fire model; conductance-based
model
Copyright © 2002 Society for Neuroscience 0270-6474/02/22125118-11$05.00/0
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