Section: Research Program

Neural fields

Neural fields are a phenomenological way of describing the activity of population of neurons by delayed integro-differential equations. This continuous approximation turns out to be very useful to model large brain areas such as those involved in visual perception. The mathematical properties of these equations and their solutions are still imperfectly known, in particular in the presence of delays, different time scales and noise.

Our group is developing mathematical and numerical methods for analysing these equations. These methods are based upon techniques from mathematical functional analysis, bifurcation theory [9], [53], equivariant bifurcation analysis, delay equations, and stochastic partial differential equations. We have been able to characterize the solutions of these neural fields equations and their bifurcations, apply and expand the theory to account for such perceptual phenomena as edge, texture [31], and motion perception. We have also developed a theory of the delayed neural fields equations, in particular in the case of constant delays and propagation delays that must be taken into account when attempting to model large size cortical areas [11], [54]. This theory is based on center manifold and normal forms ideas [10].