The Wilson-Cowan model describes Contrast Response and Subjective Distortion

The Wilson-Cowan equations were originally proposed to describe the low-level dynamics of neural populations (Wilson&Cowan 1972). These equations have been extensively used in modelling the oscillations of cortical activity (Cowan et al. 2016). However, due to their low-level nature, very few works have attempted connections to higher level psychophysics (Herzog et al. 2003, Hermens et al. 2005) and, to the best of our knowledge, they have not been used to predict contrast response curves or subjective image quality. Interestingly (Bertalmío&Cowan 2009) showed that Wilson-Cowan models may lead to (high level) color constancy. Moreover, these models may have positive statistical effects similarly to Divisive Normalization, which is the canonical choice to understand contrast response (Watson&Solomon 1997, Carandini&Heeger 2012): while Divisive Normalization reduces redundancy due to predictive coding (Malo&Laparra 2010), Wilson-Cowan leads to local histogram equalization (Bertalmío 2014), another route to increase channel capacity.