Overcoming the limitations of motion sensor models by considering dendritic computations

Abstract

Abstract The estimation of motion is an essential process for any sighted animal. Computational models of motion sensors have a long and successful history but they still suffer from basic shortcomings, as they disagree with physiological evidence and each model is dedicated to a specific type of motion, which is controversial from a biological standpoint. In this work, we propose a new approach to modeling motion sensors that considers dendritic computations, a key aspect for predicting single-neuron responses that had previously been absent from motion models. We show how, by taking into account the dynamic and input-dependent nature of dendritic nonlinearities, our motion sensor model is able to overcome the fundamental limitations of standard approaches.