Quantitative analysis of kernel properties in Kohonen's self-organizing map algorithm: Gaussian and difference of Gaussians neighborhoods ?
Recent experimental evidence suggests that processes of plastic reconfiguration of the primate cerebral cortex may involve an inhibitory component. Here, we modify Kohonen's self-organizing map model of the cortex to include surround inhibition in its adaptation kernel. This addition not only improves the accuracy of the cortical representation, as measured by quantization error, it also tends to produce pinwheel patterns, similar to those observed in primary visual cortex.
self-organizing map cerebral cortex neuronal empiricism hypothesis