MECHANISMS UNDERLYING THE RECEPTIVE-FIELD PROPERTIES OF NEURONS IN CAT VISUAL-CORTEX

Several previous models of the circuitry of the cat's primary visual cortex are briefly described and various difficulties with them are pointed out. It is argued that the situation is more complicated than any of these models supposed, and that some of the anomalies in previous models can be overcome if additional factors are considered. A new model is proposed in which cells with strong hypercomplex properties are driven directly by geniculate cells with superimposed receptive fields, and other cortical cells are driven by geniculate cells with more scattered receptive fields. This model accounts for many of the response properties of cortical cells. © 1979.