Abstract

The statistical properties of natural images suggest an optimal form of nonlinear decomposition, in which the image is decomposed using a set of linear filters at a variety of positions, scales and orientations, and these linear responses are then rectified and divided by a weighted sum of rectified responses of nearby filters. Such divisive normalization models have become widely used in modeling steady-state responses of neurons in primary visual cortex. In addition to providing a surprisingly good characterization of "typical" neurons, the statistically optimal version of the model is consistent with unusual changes in tuning properties of these neurons at different contrast levels. These results suggest that the nonlinear response properties of cortical neurons are not an accident of biophysical implementation, but serve an important functional role.

Citations