Interpolation coding: A representation for numbers in neural models

Abstract

A central task of perception can be defined as one of computing hierarchies of invariants. One way of representing such invariants in intermediate levels of abstraction in this hierarchy is to use discrete units. These have been termed value units. A problem with such an encoding is that there has not been a good way to represent accurate numerical quantities using these units. This paper remedies the deficiency by describing a scheme that interpolates values between units representing fixed numerical quantities. The scheme has nice properties: it extends across functional mappings and it allows different sources of evidence to be combined.