Part of Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 8 (NIPS 1995)
Alexandre Pouget, Terrence J. Sejnowski
We have recently developed a theory of spatial representations in which the position of an object is not encoded in a particular frame of reference but, instead, involves neurons computing basis func(cid:173) tions of their sensory inputs. This type of representation is able to perform nonlinear sensorimotor transformations and is consis(cid:173) tent with the response properties of parietal neurons. We now ask whether the same theory could account for the behavior of human patients with parietal lesions. These lesions induce a deficit known as hemineglect that is characterized by a lack of reaction to stimuli located in the hemispace contralateral to the lesion. A simulated lesion in a basis function representation was found to replicate three of the most important aspects of hemineglect: i) The models failed to cross the leftmost lines in line cancellation experiments, ii) the deficit affected multiple frames of reference and, iii) it could be object centered. These results strongly support the basis function hypothesis for spatial representations and provide a computational theory of hemineglect at the single cell level.