Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

International Initiatives

International Research Network to Study Predictive Coding in the Retina

• Program: CHILEAN SUPPORT OF INTERNATIONAL NETWORKING BETWEEN RESEARCH CENTRES

• Project title: International Research Network to Study Predictive Coding in the Retina

• Duration: 2018-2020

• Coordinator: Maria-José Escobar, Advanced Center for Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Chile

• Other partners:

  • Advanced Center for Electrical and Electronic Engineering (Valparaiso, Chili)

  • Centro Interdisciplinario de Neurociencia de Valparaíso (CINV, Valparaíso, Chile)

• Abstract: The retina, a well-structured multilayer neural system, encodes the visual information of the environment from an input of photon flux to a series of electrical pulses that are ultimately readout by the brain to create perception and program motor actions. The retina, from an engineering point of view, can be seen as a series of circuits computing visual features from the visual world in parallel encoding only informative inputs that are then sent to the brain. Regarding all the visual features that can be detected from the outer world, motion processing represents a fundamental visual computation ruling many visuomotor behaviours. Motion sensitive neurons have been early reported in the retina, but recently additional features have been added to the pool of capabilities present in this organ: especially motion direction selectivity and predictive coding. Motion processing presents predictive coding characteristics, in the sense that there is an anticipatory response of the visual system when an object in motion follows a trajectory in the visual field. Motion anticipation is fundamental for survival. Interestingly, this mechanism, observed in the visual cortex, has been also reported in the retina. Understanding how the visual system accumulates information along a certain trajectory raises fundamental questions about neural computation, its dynamics, and implementation. This understanding could be also extended to new algorithms to image/video processing, and also, autonomous navigation of robots.

  In this project, we propose the formal establishment of a collaborative network between the AC3E Biomedical System group (AC3E-UTFSM), Centro Interdisciplinario de Neurociencia de Valparaíso (CINV -UV) and Biovision team (Inria Sophia-Antipolis Mediterranée), gathering together skills related with physiological recording in the retina, data analysis and theoretical tools to implement functional and biophysical models. This network aims to study the anticipatory response observed in the mammalian retina, characterizing its underlying mechanisms and the predictive coding capabilities present in this part of the nervous system.

Inria International Partners

Declared Inria International Partners

• Institute of Neuroscience (ION, Newcastle, UK)

• Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation (ANC, School of Informatics University of Edinburgh, UK)

• Universidad Tecnico Federico Santa María (Electronics Engineering Department, Valparaíso, Chile)

• Centro Interdisciplinario de Neurociencia de Valparaíso (CINV, Valparaíso, Chile)

• University of Genoa (DIBRIS, Genoa, Italy)