Multimodal feedforward self-organizing maps

We introduce a novel system of interconnected Self-Organizing Maps that can be used to build feedforward and recurrent networks of maps. Prime application of interconnected maps is in modelling systems that operate with multimodal data as for example in visual and auditory cortices and multimodal association areas in cortex. A detailed example of animal categorization in which the feedworward network of self-organizing maps is employed is presented. In the example we operate with 18-dimensional data projected up on the 19-dimensional hyper-sphere so that the "dot-product" learning law can be used. One potential benefit of the multimodal map is that it allows a rich structure of parallel unimodal processing with many maps involved, followed by convergence into multimodal maps. More complex stimuli can therefore be processed without a growing map size.