Sensory inputs conveying information about the environment are often noisy and incomplete, yet the brain can achieve remarkable consistency in recognizing objects. Presumably, transforming the varying input patterns into invariant object representations is pivotal for this cognitive robustness. In the classic hierarchical representation framework, early stages of sensory processing utilize independent components of environmental stimuli to ensure efficient information transmission. Representations in subsequent stages are based on increasingly complex receptive fields along a hierarchical network. This framework accurately captures the input structures; however, it is challenging to achieve invariance in representing different appearances of objects. Here we assess theoretical and experimental inconsistencies of the current framework. In its place, we propose that individual neurons encode objects by following the principle of maximal dependence capturing (MDC), which compels each neuron to capture the structural components that contain maximal information about specific objects. We implement the proposition in a computational framework incorporating dimension expansion and sparse coding, which achieves consistent representations of object identities under occlusion, corruption, or high noise conditions. The framework neither requires learning the corrupted forms nor comprises deep network layers. Moreover, it explains various receptive field properties of neurons. Thus, MDC provides a unifying principle for sensory processing.
The brain has a remarkable ability to recognize objects from noisy or corrupted sensory inputs. How this cognitive robustness is achieved computationally remains unknown. We present a coding paradigm, which encodes structural dependence among features of the input and transforms various forms of the same input into the same representation. The paradigm, through dimensionally expanded representation and sparsity constraint, allows redundant feature coding to enhance robustness and is efficient in representing objects.We demonstrate consistent representations of visual and olfactory objects under conditions of occlusion, high noise or with corrupted coding units. Robust face recognition is achievable without deep layers or large training sets. The paradigm produces both complex and simple receptive fields depending on learning experience, thereby offers a unifying framework of sensory processing. One line abstractWe present a framework of efficient coding of objects as a combination of structurally dependent feature groups that is robust against noise and corruption.
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