Development of a Simple Cell Receptive Field Structure: A Model Based on Hetero-synaptic Interactions

Abstract

Recent experimental studies of hetero-synaptic interactions in various systems have shown the role of spatial signaling in plasticity, challenging the conventional understanding of Hebb’s rule. It has also been found that activity plays a major role in plasticity, with neurotrophins acting as molecular signals translating activity into structural changes. Furthermore, role of synaptic efficacy in biasing the outcome of competition has also been revealed recently. Motivated by these experimental findings we present a model for the development of a simple cell receptive field structure based on competitive and cooperative hetero-synaptic interaction in the spatial domain. We find that with proper balance of competition and cooperation, the inputs from the two populations (ON/OFF) of LGN cells segregate starting from the homogeneous state. We obtain segregated ON and OFF regions in simple cell receptive field.