Linear and nonlinear mechanisms of motion selectivity in single neurons of the cat's visual cortex

摘要

Motion selectivity, and especially directional selectivity (DS), in complex cells of the cat's striate visual cortex depends primarily on nonlinear interactions between responses to spatially and temporally separated 2-bar components of a moving stimulus. DS simple cells were tested with optimally oriented bar-pairs. it is shown that DS always depends on nonlinear 2-bar interactions and in the example shown, does not depend significantly on 1-bar responses. These 2-bar interactions are inseparable in space-time in a way that is similar to that the authors have found previously in complex cells, which suggests that a primary function of the cat's striate cortex is to generate nonlinear spatiotemporal interactions necessary for motion processing.