Salient features instantly attract visual attention to their location and are crucial for object recognition. Experiments in ultra-fast visual perception have shown that object recognition can be surprisingly accurate given only ~20 ms of observation. Such short times exclude neural dynamics of top-down feedback and require fast mechanisms of low-level feature detection. We derive a neural model of the primary visual cortex with physiologically parameterized horizontal connections that reinforce salient features, and apply it to detect salient contours on ultra-fast time scales. Model performance qualitatively matches experimental results for human perception of contours, suggesting rapid neural mechanisms involving feedforward horizontal connections can be used to distinguish low-level objects.

This research describes a study into the ability of a state of the art reinforcement learning algorithm to learn to perform multiple tasks. We demonstrate that the limitation of learning to performing two tasks can be mitigated with a competitive training method. We show that this approach results in improved generalization of the system when performing unforeseen tasks. The learning agent assessed is an altered version of the DeepMind deep Q–learner network (DQN), which has been demonstrated to outperform human players for a number of Atari 2600 games. The key findings of this paper is that there were significant degradations in performance when learning more than one game, and how this varies depends on both similarity and the comparative complexity of the two games.

The two-dimensional Gabor function is adapted to natural image statistics, leading to a tractable probabilistic generative model that can be used to model simple cell receptive field profiles, or generate basis functions for sparse coding applications. Learning is found to be most pronounced in three Gabor function parameters representing the size and spatial frequency of the two-dimensional Gabor function and characterized by a nonuniform probability distribution with heavy tails. All three parameters are found to be strongly correlated, resulting in a basis of multiscale Gabor functions with similar aspect ratios and size-dependent spatial frequencies. A key finding is that the distribution of receptive-field sizes is scale invariant over a wide range of values, so there is no characteristic receptive field size selected by natural image statistics. The Gabor function aspect ratio is found to be approximately conserved by the learning rules and is therefore not well determined by natural image statistics. This allows for three distinct solutions: a basis of Gabor functions with sharp orientation resolution at the expense of spatial-frequency resolution, a basis of Gabor functions with sharp spatial-frequency resolution at the expense of orientation resolution, or a basis with unit aspect ratio. Arbitrary mixtures of all three cases are also possible. Two parameters controlling the shape of the marginal distributions in a probabilistic generative model fully account for all three solutions. The best-performing probabilistic generative model for sparse coding applications is found to be a gaussian copula with Pareto marginal probability density functions.

The thalamus is introduced to a recent model of the visual cortex to examine its effect on pattern formation in general and the generation of temporally oscillating patterns in particular. By successively adding more physiological details to a basic corticothalamic model, it is determined which features are responsible for which effects. In particular, with the addition of a thalamic population, several changes occur in the spatiotemporal power spectrum: power increases at resonances of the corticothalamic loop, while the loop acts as a spatiotemporal low-pass filter, and synaptic and dendritic dynamics temporally low-pass filter the activity more generally. Investigation of the effect of altering parameters and gains reveals new parameter regimes where activity that corresponds to hallucinations is induced by both spatially homogeneous and inhomogeneous temporally oscillating modes. This suggests that the thalamus and corticothalamic loops are essential components of a model of oscillating visual hallucinations.

We propose a theory that qualitatively predicts the stability and equilibrium structure of long-lived, quasi-steady flow states in decaying two-dimensional turbulence. This theory combines a maximum entropy principal with a nonlinear parameterization of the vorticity-stream-function dependency of such long-lived states. In particular, this theory predicts unidirectional-flow states that are bistable, exhibit hysteresis, and undergo large abrupt changes in flow topology; and a vortex-pair state that undergoes continuous changes in flow topology. These qualitative predictions are confirmed in numerical simulations of the two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equation. We discuss limitations of the theory, and why a reduced quantitative theory of long-lived flow states is difficult to obtain. We also provide a partial theoretical justification for why certain sets of initial conditions go to certain long-lived flow states.