Reproducing sensory induced hallucinations via neural fields
This work addresses a physiological challenge for neuroscience and perception research, but it appears incremental as it reproduces existing results rather than introducing new findings.
The authors tackled the problem of understanding sensory-induced cortical patterns in the visual cortex by developing a theoretical framework that reproduces known psychophysical effects like the MacKay effect and Billock and Tsou experiences.
Understanding sensory-induced cortical patterns in the primary visual cortex V1 is an important challenge both for physiological motivations and for improving our understanding of human perception and visual organisation. In this work, we focus on pattern formation in the visual cortex when the cortical activity is driven by a geometric visual hallucination-like stimulus. In particular, we present a theoretical framework for sensory-induced hallucinations which allows one to reproduce novel psychophysical results such as the MacKay effect (Nature, 1957) and the Billock and Tsou experiences (PNAS, 2007).