Spatial and color hallucinations in a mathematical model of primary visual cortex (Q2073637)

There is a study on chromatic aspects of visual perception by means of neural fields theory. The article considers a neural field model for color perceptions introduced by the authors in a previous article, [\textit{A. Song} et al., ``A neural field model for color perception unifying assimilation and contrast'', PLoS Comput. Biol. 15, No. 6, Article ID e1007050, 28 p. (2019; \url{doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007050})]. The investigation here focuses on how this model can predict visual hallucinations. The model is briefly presented in the second section and is described by an initial value problem to the Hammerstein equation which is an integro-partial differential equation for the average membrane potential V (r, c, t). Under some assumptions and choice of an appropriate function space, one reminds that the existence of a unique solution to the Cauchy problem has been proved in an earlier paper from, [\textit{R. Veltz} and \textit{O. Faugeras}, SIAM J. Appl. Dyn. Syst. 9, No. 3, 954--998 (2010; Zbl 1194.92015)]. The aim further is to study the stationary solutions to the considered equations and their bifurcations which are interpreted as possible metaphors of visual hallucinations. In the next three sections one introduces the notion of stationary solutions, their bifurcations, one performs the computation of the spectrum of the linear operator in the neural model and one shows the symmetries of the model and equivariant bifurcations of the solutions. Examples of four types of planforms are presented in the sixth Section. A numerical bifurcation analysis is performed in the seventh Section. One describes the numerical experiments and presents some first, second and third bifurcation diagrams. Conclusions are provided in the eighth Section. A very interesting research paper and good presentation.