Fast efficient coding and sensory adaptation in gain-adaptive recurrent networks

As the statistics of sensory environments often change, neural sensory systems must adapt to maintain useful representations. Efficient coding prescribes that neuronal tuning curves should be optimized to the prior, but whether they can adapt rapidly is unclear. Empirically, tuning curves after repeated stimulus presentations exhibit “adapter repulsion”, whose underlying mechanism remains uncertain, and which contrasts with the “prior attraction” expected under many efficient-coding models. We propose a gain-adaptive, recurrent sensory network model in which gains optimize a novel efficient-coding objective balancing accuracy and spiking cost. From the propagation of modulated gains throughout the network emerge quickly adaptive tuning curves. The model accounts for subtle adapter-repulsion effects under peaked priors and predicts fast prior attraction under broader distributions, for which we provide supporting behavioral evidence. Our framework reconciles seemingly contradictory adaptive phenomena, under a unified theoretical and mechanistic model of efficient coding mediated by gain modulation in recurrent circuits.