Browse all publications by topic
Browse all publications by year
- C. Weber, H. Ritter, J. Cowan,
and K. Obermayer. Development and Regeneration of the Retinotectal Map in
Goldfish: a Computational Study.
.
Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. Lond. B, 352:1603-1623, 1997.
(FTP Gzipped PostScript, 36 pages, 157 kb)
We present a simple computational model to study the in terplay of
activity dependent and intrinsic processes thought to be involved in the
formation of topographic neural projections. Our model consists of two input
layers which project to one target layer. The connections between layers are
described by a set of synaptic weights. These weights develop according to
three interacting developmental rules: (i) an in trinsic fiber-target
interaction which generates chemospecific adhesion between afferent fibers
and target cells, (ii) an in trinsic fiber-fiber interaction which generates
mutual selective adhesion between the afferent fibers and (iii) an
activity-dependent fiber-fiber interaction which implements Hebbian learning.
Additionally, constraints are imposed to keep synaptic weights finite. The
model is applied to a set of eleven experiments on the regeneration of the
retinotectal projection in goldfish. We find that the model is able to
reproduce the outcome of an unprecedented range of experiments with the same
set of model parameters, including details of the size of receptive and
projective fields. We expect this mathematical framework to be a useful tool
for the analysis of developmental processes in general.
|
