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The uncertainty principal in vision

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Abstract

During research into the relationship between the bandpass width of the spatial frequency characteristic (ΔF) and the size (D) of the receptive field of the cat striate cortex it was found that ΔF·D=1.2. Inaccuracy in spatial signal representation is thus related by an uncertainty principle to inaccuracy of frequency representation within the system of elements involved in information processing in the cat association cortex. The magnitude of the constant shows that the distribution functions of elements are sinusoids or cosinusoids modulated by square-wave impulses rather than Gabor elements. The magnitude of the constant and the fact that an uncertainty principle operates would support the hypothesis that the receptive fields of the visual cortex constitute a quasilinear basis.

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Authors
  1. V. D. Glezer
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  2. V. E. Gauzel'man
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  3. V. V. Yakovlev
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Additional information

I. P. Pavlov Institute of Physiology, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Leningrad. Translated from Neirofiziologiya, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 307–312, May–June, 1986.

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Glezer, V.D., Gauzel'man, V.E. & Yakovlev, V.V. The uncertainty principal in vision. Neurophysiology 18, 222–226 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01052539

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01052539

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