@Article{Supelec837,
author = {Jérémy Fix and Nicolas Rougier and Frédéric Alexandre},
title = {{From physiological principles to computational models of the cortex}},
journal = {Journal of Physiology-Paris},
year = {2007},
volume = {101},
number = {1--3},
pages = {32--39},
url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092842570700037X},
doi = {10.1016/j.jphysparis.2007.10.009},
abstract = {Understanding the brain goes through the assimilation of an
increasing amount of biological data going from single cell
recording to brain imaging studies and behavioral analysis. The
description of cognition at these three levels provides us with a
grid of analysis that can be exploited for the design of
computational models. Beyond data related to specific tasks to be
emulated by models, each of these levels also lays emphasis on
principles of computation that must be obeyed to really implement
biologically inspired computations. Similarly, the advantages of
such a joint approach are twofold: computational models are a
powerful tool to experiment brain theories and assess them on the
implementation of realistic tasks, such as visual search tasks.
They are also a way to explore and exploit an original formalism
of asynchronous, distributed and adaptive computations with such
precious properties as self-organization, emergence, robustness
and more generally abilities to cope with an intelligent
interaction with the world. In this article, we first discuss
three levels at which a cortical circuit might be observed to
provide a modeler with sufficient information to design a
computational model and illustrate this principle with an
application to the control of visual attention.}
}