Edge Detection and Segmentation Type Responses in Primary Visual Cortex

The primary visual cortex consists of varied neuronal structures and connectivity links contributing to complex feature extraction such as edge detection, contour detection, depth and motion detection. But the functional basis of such complex computation is not yet realized. In the proposed work, an attempt has been made to model a single layer of retinal ganglion cell network incorporating morphologically detailed neurons with active dendritic integration to investigate the role of morphology, localized active membrane and connectome specificity. Two different connectome-specific instances of the layer are simulated with one network connected with excitatory connections with ON-bipolar cell behaved as scene segmenter, whereas another network connected with specific connections with ON- and OFF-bipolar cell with excitatory and inhibitory connections, respectively, behaves as an edge detector.