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Center-Surround Processing, Computational Role of

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Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience

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Synonyms

Center-surround modulations; Contextual integration; Contextual processing; Nonclassical receptive fields

Definition

Center-surround processing (CSP) describes the integration of localized “center” with contextual (“surround”) information into a more global representation. It has been studied mostly as a sensory computation, in particular in the early visual system (Carandini et al. 2005). Although center and surround are often defined in space, CSP is a more general processing in the sense that it is also performed in other physical dimensions such as in the auditory domain or in time (Schwartz et al. 2007). In neuroscientific contexts, CSP is defined rather mechanistically as the difference between the processing of localized and extended stimuli. Signatures for CSP are found in many different brain areas, where the responses of neurons to a localized stimulus are strongly and often nonlinearly influenced by its context. Computationally, these processes are thought to be...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computational Neuroscience, Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Bremen, Hochschulring 18, 28359, Bremen, Germany

    Dr. Udo Ernst

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  1. Dr. Udo Ernst
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Correspondence to Udo Ernst .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Dieter Jaeger

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA

    Ranu Jung

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Ernst, U. (2014). Center-Surround Processing, Computational Role of. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_569-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_569-1

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  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7320-6

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