Proceedings of the 7th Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting
July 26-30 - 2000 - Santa Barbara (California, USA).
 
Networks of Integrate-and-Fire Neurons using Rank Order Coding I: Receptive Field Emergence
 
Arnaud Delorme & Simon J. Thorpe
 

Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition (UMR 5549) Faculté de Médecine de Rangueil, 133 route de Narbonne, 31062 Toulouse, France.

arno@cerco.ups-tlse.fr, thorpe@cerco.ups-tlse.fr

 
    Rank Order Coding is an alternative to conventional rate coding schemes that uses the order in which a neuron's inputs fire to encode information. Here we tested whether unsupervised learning algorithms could develop neuronal selectivity in networks of such neurons. In a visual system framework, we simulated the asynchronous waves of retinal spikes produced in response to natural scenes and used them to stimulate integrate-and-fire V1 neurons that implemented a Hebbian-like learning rule. After propagating thousands of images, orientation like receptive fields arise in these neurons despite the fact that the input neurons never fired more than once.