Information Synergy in the Anticipatory Dynamics of a Retina

• Published in: arXiv.org 2021-03
• Main Authors: Qi-Rong, Lin, Po-Yu Chou, Chan, C K
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Illusions; Luminous intensity; Retina
• ISSN: 2331-8422
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2103.07122

Visual perceptions often come with illusions whose physical origin are not well understood yet. The encoding of stochastic light intensity \(x(t)\) into spikes with firing rate \(r(t)\) at time \(t\) is investigated in an experiment with retinas from bullfrogs to understand the mechanism of anticipation. Partial information decomposition of the mutual information between \(r\) and the combined state \(\{x,\dot x\}\) is found to be consistent with the encoding form: \(r(t) \sim (1-\lambda)x(t) + \lambda \dot x(t) \tau_0\) with \(\lambda\) being a system dependent parameter and \(\tau_0\) a constant. This form of \(r(t)\) indicates that a retina is capable of anticipation based on the synergistic information generation between \(x\) and \(\dot x\). Our results suggest that illusions such as the anticipation studied here during retinal perception can originate from the recombination of information extracted in the retinal network.