The Journal of physiology
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The Journal of physiology · Oct 1978
Spatial summation in the receptive fields of simple cells in the cat's striate cortex.
1. We have examined the responses of simple cells in the cat's atriate cortex to visual patterns that were designed to reveal the extent to which these cells may be considered to sum light-evoked influences linearly across their receptive fields. We used one-dimensional luminance-modulated bars and grating as stimuli; their orientation was always the same as the preferred orientation of the neurone under study. ⋯ We compared simple receptive fields with their sensitivity to sinusoidal gratings of different spatial frequencies. Qualitatively, the most sensitive subregions of simple cells' receptive fields are roughly the same width as the individual bars of the gratings to which they are most sensitive. Quantitatively, their receptive field profiles measured with thin stationary lines, agree well with predicted profiles derived by Fourier synthesis of their spatial frequency tuning curves.