The maximization of diversity of neuronal response properties has been recently suggested as an organizing principle for the formation of such prominent features of the functional architecture of the brain as the cortical columns and the associated patchy projection patterns (Malach, 1994). We show that (1) maximal diversity is attained when the ratio of dendritic and axonal arbor sizes is equal to one, as found in many cortical areas and across species (Lund et al., 1993; Malach, 1994), and (2) that maximization of diversity leads to better performance in systems of receptive fields implementing steerable/shiftable filters, and in matching spatially distributed signals, a problem that arises in many high-level visual tasks.
['Kalanit Grill Spector', 'Shimon Edelman', 'Rafael Malach']
Anatomical origin and computational role of diversity in the response properties of cortical neurons