On Function of the Cortical Column and Its Significance for Machine Learning

Alexei Mikhailov, Mikhail Karavay

2024

Abstract

Columnar organization of the neocortex is widely adopted to explain the cortical processing of information (Mountcastle, V., 1957, Mountcastle, V., 1997, DeFelipe, J., 2012). Neurons within a minicolumn (feature column) simultaneously respond to a specific feature, whereas neurons within a macrocolumn respond to all values of receptive field parameters (Horton, J., Adams, D., 2005). Hypotheses for a cortical column function envisage a massively repeated “canonical” circuit or a spatiotemporal filter (Bastos, A. et al., 2012). However, nearly a century after the neuroanatomical organization of the cortex was first defined, there is still no consensus about what a function of the cortical column is (Marcus, G., Marblestone, A., Dean, T., 2014). That is, why are cortical pyramidal neurons arranged into columns? Here we propose what the function of the neocortical column is using both neuro-physiological and computational evidence. This conjecture of the column’s function helped find a way of evaluating the memory capacity of a cortical region in terms of patterns as a solution to a suggested connectivity equation. Also, it allowed introducing a connectivity-based machine learning model that accounted for pattern recognition accuracy, noise tolerance and showed how to build practically instant learning pattern recognition systems.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Mikhailov A. and Karavay M. (2024). On Function of the Cortical Column and Its Significance for Machine Learning. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Pattern Recognition Applications and Methods - Volume 1: ICPRAM; ISBN 978-989-758-684-2, SciTePress, pages 461-468. DOI: 10.5220/0012542600003654

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icpram24,
author={Alexei Mikhailov and Mikhail Karavay},
title={On Function of the Cortical Column and Its Significance for Machine Learning},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Pattern Recognition Applications and Methods - Volume 1: ICPRAM},
year={2024},
pages={461-468},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0012542600003654},
isbn={978-989-758-684-2},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Pattern Recognition Applications and Methods - Volume 1: ICPRAM
TI - On Function of the Cortical Column and Its Significance for Machine Learning
SN - 978-989-758-684-2
AU - Mikhailov A.
AU - Karavay M.
PY - 2024
SP - 461
EP - 468
DO - 10.5220/0012542600003654
PB - SciTePress