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Understanding Sensory Induced Hallucinations: From Neural Fields to Amplitude Equations

7 October 2021 @ 12:00 13:00

Explorations of visual hallucinations, and in particular those of Billock and Tsou [Neural interactions between flicker-induced self-organized visual hallucinations and physical stimuli.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(20):8490-8495, 2007], show that annular rings with a background flicker can induce visual hallucinations in humans that take the form of radial fan shapes. The well-known retino-cortical map tells us that the corresponding patterns of neural activity in the primary visual cortex for rings and arms in the retina are orthogonal stripe patterns. The implication is that cortical forcing by spatially periodic input can excite orthogonal modes of neural activity.  Here we show that a simple scalar neural field model of primary visual cortex with state-dependent spatial forcing is capable of modelling this phenomenon.  Moreover, we show that this occurs most robustly when the spatial forcing has a 2:1 resonance with modes that would otherwise be excited by a Turing instability.  By utilising a weakly nonlinear multiple-scales analysis we determine the relevant amplitude equations for uncovering the parameter regimes which favour the excitation of patterns orthogonal to sensory drive.  In combination with direct numerical simulations, we use this approach to shed further light on the original psychophysical observations of Billock and Tsou. This is joint work with Abigail Cocks, Stephen Coombes, Alan Johnston (Nottingham, Psychology) and Daniele Avitabile (VU Amsterdam)

Watch the recording below.

Dr Rachel Nicks

A17, Mathematical Sciences Building

University Park
Nottingham, NG7 2RD United Kingdom