Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

National Initiatives

ANR

We participate in the project Keops: Algorithms for modeling the visual system: From natural vision to numerical applications (2011-2014).

A recent description in the retina of non-standard ganglion cells types, beside a complex repertoire of standard ganglion cells, responses in front of natural stimulus and conveys important questions about the real, early processing capacity of the retina. This leads to revisit both the neural coding of the information the eye is sending to the brain, and also sheds light to engineering applications from the understanding of such encoding, as detailed in the sequel. At the modeling level, retinal cells are mainly formalized using a LN (Linear spatio-temporal filtering followed by a static Non-linear transduction), while an important fraction of non-standard cells response cannot be represented in such a model class. This is a challenge to develop an innovative formalism that takes such complex behaviors into account, with such immediate applications as new dynamical early-visual modules. Proposing new innovative bioinspired formalisms in order to perform dynamical visuo-perceptual tasks adapted to natural environment is a main goal of this project, with a special focus to scenes including complex visual motion interacting with light.

The project is a cooperation between the University of Nice (France), the University of Valparaiso (Chile), the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in Santiago de Chile, the Inria teams NeuroMathComp, Mnemosyne, Cortex and Neurosys.

Others

• Inria Technological development action (ADT): OpenViBE-NT

  This is a three-year multi-site project (2012–2015) to develop OpenViBE further on several fronts such as usability, new algorithms and scope of applicability. Teams of the ADT are Hybrid(Rennes), Athena (Sophia), Potioc (Bordeaux) and Neurosys. Coordinator is Laurent Bougrain.

• Multidisciplinary Exploratory Project (PEPS 2014) Bio-Maths-Info (BMI): Characterising the laminar profile of motor cortical oscillatory synchronization during visuomotor behavior with new analysis tools.

  Oscillations are omnipresent in the brain, but their function is still disputed. In motor cortex, beta and gamma oscillations are often observed, but their proposed roles in sensorimotor behavior are largely overlapping. While much is known on the laminar distribution of oscillations in sensory areas, the very sparse data on the laminar profile of motor cortical oscillations largely limits their functional interpretations. The 2-years project studies the layer specificity of monkey motor cortical oscillations and oscillatory interactions between the motor areas M1 and PMd during visuomotor behavior. Extending conventional tools, such as coherency analysis, Neurosys develops a new method to quantify short-lasting partial amplitude and phase synchronization in single-trial data, based on wavelets, exploiting the predefined vicinity of contacts on the laminar probes. The application of this new method to the data recorded in Marseille will reveal instantaneous amplitude and phase synchronization between cortical layers and between the brain areas M1 and PMd, providing novel insights into the functional roles of beta and gamma oscillations in visuomotor behavior. The experimental partner at the Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone in Marseille is Bjork Kilavik. The contact in Neurosys is Axel Hutt.