Cortext: a columnar model of bottom-up and top-down processing in the neocortex

Experimental data suggests that a first hypothesis about the content of a complex visual scene is available as early as 150 ms after stimulus presentation. Other evidence suggests that recognition in the visual cortex of mammals is a bidirectional, often top-down driven process. Here, we present a spiking neural network model that demonstrates how the cortex can use both strategies: Faced with a new stimulus, the cortex first tries to catch the gist of the scene. The gist is then fed back as global hypothesis to influence and redirect further bottom-up processing. We propose that these two modes of processing are carried out in different layers of the cortex. A cortical column may, thus, be primarily defined by the specific connectivity that links neurons in different layers into a functional circuit. Given an input, our model generates an initial hypothesis after only a few milliseconds. The first wave of action potentials traveling up the hierarchy activates representations of features and feature combinations. In most cases, the correct feature representation is activated strongest and precedes all other candidates with millisecond precision. Thus, our model codes the reliability of a response in the relative latency of spikes. In the subsequent refinement stage where high-level activity modulates lower stages, this activation dominance is propagated back, influencing its own afferent activity to establish a unique decision. Thus, top-down influence de-activates representations that have contributed to the initial hypothesis about the current stimulus, comparable to predictive coding. Features that do not match the top-down prediction trigger an error signal that can be the basis for learning new representations.