The role of feedback in a hierarchical model of object perception.

We present a model which stems from a well-established model of object recognition, HMAX, and show how this feedforward system can include feedback, using a recently proposed architecture which reconciles biased competition and predictive coding approaches. Simulation results show successful feedforward object recognition, including cases of occluded and illusory images. Recognition is both position and size invariant. The model also provides a functional interpretation of the role of feedback connectivity in accounting for several observed effects such as enhancement, suppression and refinement of activity in lower areas. The model can qualitatively replicate responses in early visual cortex to occluded and illusory contours; and fMRI data showing that high-level object recognition reduces activity in lower areas. A Gestalt-like mechanism based on collinearity, co-orientation and good continuation principles is proposed to explain illusory contour formation which allows the system to adapt a single high-level object prototype to illusory Kanizsa figures of different sizes, shapes and positions. Overall the model provides a biophysiologically plausible interpretation, supported by current experimental evidence, of the interaction between top-down global feedback and bottom-up local evidence in the context of hierarchical object perception.