29 research outputs found
Coverage, Continuity and Visual Cortical Architecture
The primary visual cortex of many mammals contains a continuous
representation of visual space, with a roughly repetitive aperiodic map of
orientation preferences superimposed. It was recently found that orientation
preference maps (OPMs) obey statistical laws which are apparently invariant
among species widely separated in eutherian evolution. Here, we examine whether
one of the most prominent models for the optimization of cortical maps, the
elastic net (EN) model, can reproduce this common design. The EN model
generates representations which optimally trade of stimulus space coverage and
map continuity. While this model has been used in numerous studies, no
analytical results about the precise layout of the predicted OPMs have been
obtained so far. We present a mathematical approach to analytically calculate
the cortical representations predicted by the EN model for the joint mapping of
stimulus position and orientation. We find that in all previously studied
regimes, predicted OPM layouts are perfectly periodic. An unbiased search
through the EN parameter space identifies a novel regime of aperiodic OPMs with
pinwheel densities lower than found in experiments. In an extreme limit,
aperiodic OPMs quantitatively resembling experimental observations emerge.
Stabilization of these layouts results from strong nonlocal interactions rather
than from a coverage-continuity-compromise. Our results demonstrate that
optimization models for stimulus representations dominated by nonlocal
suppressive interactions are in principle capable of correctly predicting the
common OPM design. They question that visual cortical feature representations
can be explained by a coverage-continuity-compromise.Comment: 100 pages, including an Appendix, 21 + 7 figure
Orientation tuning of cytochrome oxidase patches in macaque primary visual cortex
The abundant concentration of cytochrome oxidase in patches or blobs of primate striate cortex has never been explained. Patches are thought to contain unoriented, color-opponent neurons. Lacking orientation selectivity, these cells might endow patches with a high level of metabolic activity because they respond to all contours in visual scenes. To test this idea, orientation tuning was measured in layer 2/3 of macaque V1 using acutely implanted 100-electrode arrays. Each electrode recording site was identified, and assigned to the patch or interpatch compartment. The mean orientation bandwidth of cells was 28.4 ° in patches and 25.8 ° in interpatches. Neurons in patches were indeed less orientation selective, but the difference was subtle, indicating that the processing of form and color is not strictly segregated in V1. The most conspicuous finding was that patch cells had a 49 % greater overall firing rate. This global difference in neuronal responsiveness, rather than an absence of orientation tuning, may account for the rich mitochondrial enzyme activity that defines patches