Topic: localized connectivity

Motion detection is a fundamental task for the visual system, with cells as early as the retina showing selectivity to specific directions of motion. These cells typically have localized connectivity and receptive fields. Why not pool information from locations that are far apart to improve motion sensing? Here we provide a normative model that relates the lack of distant connections in motion-sensitive cells to the statistics of natural videos, which exhibit localized patterns undergoing localized motion. These local motions largely conserve contrast in a visual scene, allowing us to treat t