Section: Research Program

Visual neuroscience

Our group focuses on the visual system to understand how information is encoded and processed resulting in visual percepts. To do so, we propose functional models of the visual system using a variety of mathematical formalisms, depending on the scale at which models are built, such as spiking neural networks or neural fields. So far, our efforts have been focused on the study of retinal processing, edge and texture perception, motion integration at the level of V1 and MT cortical areas.

At the retina level, we are modeling its circuitry [14] and we are studying the statistics of the spike train output (see, e.g., the software ENAS https://enas.inria.fr/ ). Real cell recordings are also analysed in collaboration with Institut de la vision, Paris ; Centro de Neurociencia Valparaiso; Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University . For visual edges perception, we have used the theory of neural fields [13] . For visual textures perception, we have used a combination of neural fields theory and equivariant bifurcations theory [3] . At the level of V1-MT cortical areas, we have been investigating the temporal dynamics of motion integration for a wide range of visual stimuli [85] , [90] , [57] , [9] . This work is done in collaboration with Institut des Neurosciences de la Timone, Marseille .

Selected publications on this topic: lien .