A software-hardware selective attention system

Selective attention is a biological mechanisms to process salient subregions of the sensory input space, while suppressing non-salient inputs. We present a hardware selective attention system, implemented using a neuromorphic VLSI chip interfaced to a workstation, via a custom PCI board and based on an address event (spike based) representation of signals. The chip selecs salient inputs and sequentially shifts from one salient input to the other. The PCI board acts as an interface between the chip and an algorithm that generates saliency maps. We present experimental data showing the system’s response to saliency maps generated from natural scenes.