Zily Burstein’s PhD Thesis Defense

PATTERN FORMING MECHANISMS OF COLOR VISION

While our understanding of the way single neurons process chromatic stimuli in the early visual pathway has advanced significantly over recent years, we do not yet know how these cells interact to form stable representations of hue. Drawing on the findings of physiological studies, I offer a dynamical model of how the primary visual cortex tunes for color, hinged on intracortical interactions and emergent network effects. After detailing the evolution of network activity through analytical and numerical approaches, I discuss the effects of the model's cortical parameters on the selectivity of the tuning curves. In particular, I explore the role of the model's thresholding nonlinearity in enhancing hue selectivity by expanding the region of stability, allowing for the precise encoding of chromatic stimuli in early vision. Finally, in the absence of a stimulus, the model is capable of explaining hallucinatory color perception via a Turing-like mechanism of biological pattern formation.