A software-hardware selective attention system

Selective attention is a biological mechanism to process salient subregions ofthe 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 ofsignals. The chip selects 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. c