Towards Lateral Inhibition and Collective Perception in Unorganised Non-Neural Systems

TL;DR

This paper presents a multi-agent model demonstrating how simple, non-neural organisms like slime mould can exhibit lateral inhibition and collective perception phenomena through bulk transport effects, without neural wiring.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model showing emergent lateral inhibition and brightness perception in unorganized, non-neural systems, expanding understanding of collective sensory processing.

Findings

Reproduces edge contrast amplification similar to lateral inhibition.

Simulates collective brightness perception effects like Chevreul staircase.

Demonstrates contrast enhancement without neural structures.

Abstract

Could simple organisms such as slime mould approximate LI without recourse to neural tissue? We describe a model whereby LI can emerge without explicit inhibitory wiring, using only bulk transport effects. We use a multi-agent model of slime mould to reproduce the char- acteristic edge contrast amplification effects of LI using excitation via attractant based stimuli. We also explore a counterpart behaviour, Lateral Activation (where stimulated regions are inhibited and lateral regions are excited), using simulated exposure to light irradiation. In both cases restoration of baseline activity occurs when the stimuli are removed. In addition to the enhancement of local edge contrast the long-term change in population density distribution corresponds to a collective response to the global brightness of 2D image stimuli, including the scalloped inten- sity profile of the Chevreul staircase and the perceived difference of two identically bright patches in the Simultaneous Brightness Contrast (SBC) effect. This simple modelapproximatesLIcontrastenhancementphenomenaandglobalbrightnessper- ception in collective unorganised systems without fixed neural architectures. This may encourage further research into unorganised analogues of neural processes in simple organisms and suggests novel mechanisms to generate collective perception of contrast and brightness in distributed computing and robotic devices.