Information Routing, Correspondence Finding, and Object Recognition in the Brain

Abstract

This work would not have been possible without the people I have had the honor of working with over the past years. First of all I want to thank Christoph von der Malsburg, whose scientific concepts have inspired large parts of this thesis, and who granted me enough freedom to follow my own research directions while at the same time providing motivation whenever this was necessary. I also thank Rudolf Mester for good discussions that helped me retain my engineering viewpoint on the interdisciplinary problems that I worked on. Discussions with Geoff Goodhill, Bruno Olshausen, Jochen Triesch, and Alan Yuille, among others, have shaped my thinking and had an important impact on this thesis.I thank Urs Bergmann, Jenia Jitsev, and Junmei Zhu for proof-reading parts of the thesis, and Jörg Lücke for good collaboration. The neurogroups at FIAS have provided a rich and stimulating environment, it has been fun working and thinking with you! I also thank all colleagues at FIAS for good company and the truly interdisciplinary interaction we had (e.g. at Hirschegg). Last but not least I owe this thesis to my parents, who planted curiosity and a desire for understanding in me that were stronger than the difficulties I met during this dissertation. iv