A Chimera Model for Motion Anticipation in the Retina and the Primary Visual Cortex

We propose a mean field model of the primary visual cortex (V1), connected to a realistic retina model, to study the impact of the retina on motion anticipation. We first consider the case where the retina does not itself provide anticipation—which is then only triggered by a cortical mechanism, the “anticipation by latency”—and unravel the effects of the retinal input amplitude, of stimulus features such as speed and contrast and of the size of cortical extensions and fiber conduction speed. Then we explore the changes in the cortical wave of anticipation when V1 is triggered by retina-driven anticipatory mechanisms: gain control and lateral inhibition by amacrine cells. Here, we show how retinal and cortical anticipation combine to provide an efficient processing where the simulated cortical response is in advance over the moving object that triggers this response, compensating the delays in visual processing.