Arbitrary Elastic Topologies and Ocular Dominance

Abstract

The elastic net, which has been used to produce accounts of the formation of topology-preserving maps and ocular dominance stripes (OD), embodies a nearest neighbor topology. A Hebbian account of OD is not so restricted—and indeed makes the prediction that the width of the stripes depends on the nature of the (more general) neighborhood relations. Elastic and Hebbian accounts have recently been unified, raising a question mark about their different determiners of stripe widths. This paper considers this issue, and demonstrates theoretically that it is possible to use more general topologies in the elastic net, including those effectively adopted in the Hebbian model.