How early eye circuits process and present visual features

早期眼回路如何处理和呈现视觉特征

基本信息

批准号：
BB/M009564/1
负责人：
Mikko Ilmari Juusola
金额：
$ 115.94万
依托单位：
University of Sheffield
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2015
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2015 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FM009564%2F1
关键词：
How early eye circuits process

项目摘要

From humans to fruit flies, the ability of resolve individual objects by their features and to link these features to a coherent precept of the world is crucial for visual behaviours and fitness of seeing animals. But it remains a mystery how information processing within the networks of nerve cells in the eyes make object recognition possible.Eye circuits process and represent visual information as patterns. Some of these patterns are complex and allow the brain, for example, to recognize objects from different perspectives. It is not understood how the eyes/brains represent visual information as patterns, recognises those patterns, and then solves problems. However, it is likely that the underlying processes occur at the level of circuits, where neurons and their connections interact dynamically. These important questions have direct implications for how we understand neural mechanisms for object/pattern recognition, with obvious links to artificial visual systems, machine-learning and robotics. Yet remarkably, they can be particularly well studied in the simple eyes and brain of fruit fly, Drosophila. While fly and human eyes have a very different architecture, both eyes must somehow extract object features from visual scenes, and to link these neural representations to some form of internal activity "maps" to execute goal-oriented behaviours. Importantly, Drosophila has a hard-wired circuitry of known layout, genetic toolboxes for modifying connectivity, and allows monitoring of neural activity with scalable resolution during visual stimulation/behaviour. This would not be possible in human eyes/brain. We now wish to utilise new wiring diagrams, genetic, electrophysiological and optical imaging tools available for Drosophila and state of the art mathematical analysis to study neural mechanisms of object representation at the level of its eye microcircuits. Specifically, we are interested in uncovering what kind of processing strategies early visual circuits use to extract object features; how and why eye circuits separate and integrate the representations of object colour and shape ('what' information) from that of its location and motion ('where' information), and how these representations adapt when the same object is seen in different lighting conditions/backgrounds. This research plan aims to start identifying and quantifying the fundamental early neural mechanisms for object perception that are probably used in the nervous systems of seeing animals across the animal kingdom. The knowledge we gain from these studies will not only advance our understanding of how animals see but, because the basic underlying neural connectivity and synaptic mechanisms are so widely found in other sensory systems and in our brain, will provide new insight into many other, often clinically important processes in the nervous system. Thus, our results should be off great interest to academics and industry, seeking to understand biologically-inspired design for machine sensing; principles which are usually more robust, cheaper, smaller and more energy-efficient than conventional engineering concepts. In long term, the new knowledge from our experiments and modelling may even help to manufacture novel adaptive biochips and test their performance as sensory implants.

从人类到果蝇，通过特征解析单个物体并将这些特征与世界的连贯规则联系起来的能力对于视觉行为和观察动物的适应性至关重要。但眼睛神经细胞网络内的信息处理如何使物体识别成为可能仍然是一个谜。眼电路处理视觉信息并将其表示为模式。其中一些模式很复杂，例如可以让大脑从不同的角度识别物体。目前尚不清楚眼睛/大脑如何将视觉信息表示为模式，识别这些模式，然后解决问题。然而，潜在的过程很可能发生在神经元及其连接动态相互作用的电路层面。这些重要问题对我们如何理解对象/模式识别的神经机制有直接影响，与人工视觉系统、机器学习和机器人技术有明显的联系。然而值得注意的是，它们可以在果蝇的简单眼睛和大脑中得到特别好的研究。虽然果蝇和人眼的架构非常不同，但双眼必须以某种方式从视觉场景中提取物体特征，并将这些神经表征与某种形式的内部活动“地图”联系起来，以执行面向目标的行为。重要的是，果蝇具有已知布局的硬连线电路、用于修改连接的遗传工具箱，并允许在视觉刺激/行为期间以可扩展的分辨率监测神经活动。这在人眼/大脑中是不可能的。我们现在希望利用可用于果蝇的新接线图、遗传、电生理和光学成像工具以及最先进的数学分析来研究其眼睛微电路水平上的物体表征的神经机制。具体来说，我们有兴趣揭示早期视觉电路使用什么样的处理策略来提取物体特征；眼电路如何以及为何将物体颜色和形状（“什么”信息）的表征与其位置和运动（“何处”信息）的表征分离和整合，以及在不同照明条件下看到同一物体时这些表征如何适应/背景。该研究计划旨在开始识别和量化物体感知的基本早期神经机制，这些机制可能用于观察整个动物界动物的神经系统。我们从这些研究中获得的知识不仅将增进我们对动物如何视觉的理解，而且因为基本的神经连接和突触机制在其他感觉系统和我们的大脑中广泛存在，将为许多其他通常的现象提供新的见解。神经系统中临床上重要的过程。因此，我们的结果应该引起学术界和工业界的极大兴趣，寻求理解机器传感的生物启发设计；这些原则通常比传统的工程概念更强大、更便宜、更小、更节能。从长远来看，我们的实验和建模中获得的新知识甚至可能有助于制造新型自适应生物芯片并测试其作为感觉植入物的性能。