Ultra-fast detection of salient contours through horizontal connections in the primary visual cortex

¹ CNLS and T-5, Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory - Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
² P-21, Physics, Los Alamos National Laboratory - Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA

Received: 6 January 2011
Accepted: 18 February 2011

Abstract

Salient features instantly attract visual attention to their location and are crucial for object recognition. Experiments in ultra-fast visual perception have shown that object recognition can be surprisingly accurate given only ∼20 ms of observation. Such short times exclude neural dynamics of top-down feedback and require fast mechanisms of low-level feature detection. We derive a neural model of the primary visual cortex with physiologically parameterized horizontal connections that reinforce salient features, and apply it to detect salient contours on ultra-fast time scales. Model performance qualitatively matches experimental results for human perception of contours, suggesting rapid neural mechanisms involving feedforward horizontal connections can be used to distinguish low-level objects.