D.B. Chklovskii - "Signal processing in vertebrate and invertebrate early visual systems"

Recording of the speaker's talk at the Barcelona Brain and Technology Summer School, September 2012. Listen also to an interview with this and other speakers at www.csnetwork.eu/podcast.

"Early visual systems must communicate information about the world to the rest of the brain in an economical way. A similar task is solved by communication engineers using compression strategies such as predictive coding. Assuming that visual systems rely on predictive coding we construct a powerful theoretical framework to understand visual processing in vertebrates and invertebrates. Because of adaptation by natural selection, natural scene statistics are reflected in the properties of the visual systems allowing us to predict neuron receptive fields measured experimentally."