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Summary:
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INTRODUCTION:
The design of a neural net based robotic optical circuit that generates a 3D-visual image is based on two discoveries; the discovery of the Wheatstone stereoscope (Wheatstone,1838) and the discovery of a robotic sensory motor control system based on tactile modalities (Rosen & Rosen, 2006 a,b, 2007••(see http://www.mcon.org/refpublications.html).••
The Wheatstone stereoscope converts binocular vision, consisting of two 2D-images into a 3D-image that corresponds to the 3D-objects that gave rise to the two 2D-images. Steven Pinker (1997) writes “Wheatstone proved that the brain turns trigonometry into consciousness when he designed the 3D-picture stereogram.”
The sensory-motor control system (Rosen & Rosen, 2006 a,b, 2007) is designed by reverse engineering the connectivity of the tactile receptors distributed on the skin surface of the body. Each receptor is assumed to have a “itch-type” modality-sensation correlated with it. The connectivity of the receptors and the central connections associated with them may be viewed as a neuronal circuit in the brain, defined as the biological Neuronal Correlate of a Modality (NCM). The reverse engineered NCM-circuit is the sensation-generating Mechanism (SgM) that generates the “itch-type” sensation defined by the modality of the tactile sensor (reverse engineered by pressure transducers) (Rosen & Rosen, 2006c) ••(see http://www.mcon.org/refpublications.html)••
2. METHOD
The design procedure for reverse engineering the central connections of the visual-NCM was defined but not implemented (Rosen & Rosen, 2006 a,b, 2007) and presented at the IEEE-IJCNN-WCCI-Vancouver conference, and the ICONIP-2006 Hong Kong Conference. The design procedure was described as follows:
A. The modalities and central connections of the visual receptors must give rise to a sensory form of “self”-location and identification data (of all body parts) in a coordinate frame defined by the visual receptors and located within the controller.
B. The coordinate frame defined by the visual receptors must be consistent with, and calibrated with the coordinate frame defined by the tactile-modalities of mechanoreceptors.
In order to proceed with the reverse engineered design of a visual NCM-circuit, it is necessary to expand the law of specific nerve energy to collective groups of receptors that are activated simultaneously. In the field of psychophysics1, The law of specific nerve energy (Muller, 1826; Haines, 2002) applied to the modalities of the individual visual receptors, explains the subjective sensation of pinpoints of light, and small patches of visual colors correlated with the L, M, and S cones (Guyton, 1991). However, groups and patterns of receptors must be activated simultaneously, in order to generate a visual experience of “seeing” the shape, form, and color generated by the pattern. Thus the law of specific nerve energy must be expanded to a collection of receptors that are activated simultaneously. The law of collective nerve energy consists of the sum of the activations that adhere to the law of specific nerve energy. In the following sections the subjective experience of a collective sensation is defined to be the collective modality of groups of biological receptors that are activated simultaneously.
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