A hardware system for emulating the early vision utilizing a silicon retina and SpiNNaker chips

To reveal the functional roles of retinal and cortical neurons, responses of a visual neuronal network under natural visual environments should be investigated. In this study, we developed a real-time visual system emulator for reproducing neural activities in the retina and the visual cortex by combining a hardware retina emulator developed in the previous study and SpiNNaker chips. An interface board was designed and fabricated to provide retinal spikes simulated by the retina emulator to SpiNNaker chips. Taking advantages of multiple parallel processing techniques, the emulator generates simulated spikes with 1 ms precision. Neural responses simulated by the emulator was examined by presenting natural scenes.