December 17, 2013

The brain’s data compression mechanisms


Neurons subtract images and use the differences

Primary cortex generates efficiently compressed sensory information

fficient reduction of data volumes

Researchers have hitherto assumed that information supplied by the sense of sight was transmitted almost in its entirety from its entry point to higher brain areas, across which visual sensation is generated. “It was therefore a surprise to discover that the data volumes are considerably reduced as early as in the primary visual cortex, the bottleneck leading to the cerebrum,” says PD Dr Dirk Jancke from the Institute for Neural Computation at the Ruhr-Universität. “We intuitively assume that our visual system generates a continuous stream of images, just like a video camera. However, we have now demonstrated that the visual cortex suppresses redundant information and saves energy by frequently forwarding image differences.”