Biblio

We study the control of monotone systems when the objective is to maintain trajectories in a directed set (that is, either upper or lower set) within a signal space. We define the notion of a directed alternating simulation relation and show how it can be used to tackle common bottlenecks in abstraction-based controller synthesis. First, we develop sparse abstractions to speed up the controller synthesis procedure by reducing the number of transitions. Next, we enable a compositional synthesis approach by employing directed assume-guarantee contracts between systems. In a vehicle traffic network example, we synthesize an intersection signal controller while dramatically reducing runtime and memory requirements compared to previous approaches.

Models of visual attention postulate the existence of a saliency map whose function is to guide attention and gaze to the most conspicuous regions in a visual scene. Although cortical representations of saliency have been reported, there is mounting evidence for a subcortical saliency mechanism, which pre-dates the evolution of neocortex. Here, we conduct a strong test of the saliency hypothesis by comparing the output of a well-established computational saliency model with the activation of neurons in the primate superior colliculus (SC), a midbrain structure associated with attention and gaze, while monkeys watched video of natural scenes. We find that the activity of SC superficial visual-layer neurons (SCs), specifically, is well-predicted by the model. This saliency representation is unlikely to be inherited from fronto-parietal cortices, which do not project to SCs, but may be computed in SCs and relayed to other areas via tectothalamic pathways.