Sensory signals give rise to patterns of neural activity, which the brain uses to infer properties of the environment. For the visual system, considerable work has focused on the representation of frontoparallel stimulus features and binocular disparities. However, inferring the properties of the physical environment from retinal stimulation is a distinct and more challenging computational problem-this is what the brain must actually accomplish to support perception and action. Here we develop a computational model that incorporates projective geometry, mapping the three-dimensional (3D) environment onto the two retinae. We demonstrate that this mapping fundamentally shapes the tuning of cortical neurons and corresponding aspects of perception. For 3D motion, the model explains the strikingly non-canonical tuning present in existing electrophysiological data and distinctive patterns of perceptual errors evident in human behavior. Decoding the world from cortical activity is strongly affected by the geometry that links the environment to the sensory epithelium.

中文翻译：

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双目观察几何塑造了动态三维环境的神经表示。

感觉信号会产生神经活动的模式，大脑用它来推断环境的特性。对于视觉系统，相当多的工作集中在正面平行刺激特征和双眼视差的表示上。然而，从视网膜刺激中推断物理环境的属性是一个独特且更具挑战性的计算问题——这是大脑实际上必须完成的才能支持感知和行动。在这里，我们开发了一个包含投影几何的计算模型，将三维 (3D) 环境映射到两个视网膜上。我们证明，这种映射从根本上塑造了皮层神经元的调整和感知的相应方面。对于 3D 运动，该模型解释了现有电生理数据中存在的显着非规范调整和人类行为中明显的感知错误的独特模式。从皮质活动中解码世界受到将环境与感觉上皮连接起来的几何结构的强烈影响。