A Principle for the Formation of the Spatial Structure of Cortical Feature Maps

Orientation-selective cells in the striate cortex of higher animals are organized as a hierarchical topographic map of two stimulus features: (i) position in visual space and (ii) orientation. We show that the observed structure of the topographic map can arise from a principle of continuous mapping...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 1990-11, Vol.87 (21), p.8345-8349
Main Authors: Obermayer, K., Ritter, H., Schulten, K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Macaca
Mathematical functions
Mathematical models
Mathematics
Models, Neurological
Neurobiology
Numerical eccentricity
Orientation
Skis
Spatial distribution
Statistical variance
Topographical maps
Visual cortex
Visual Cortex - anatomy & histology
Visual Cortex - physiology
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Summary:Orientation-selective cells in the striate cortex of higher animals are organized as a hierarchical topographic map of two stimulus features: (i) position in visual space and (ii) orientation. We show that the observed structure of the topographic map can arise from a principle of continuous mapping. For the realization of this principle we use a mathematical model that can be interpreted as an adaptive process changing a set of synaptic weights, or synaptic connection strengths, between two layers of cells. The patterns of orientation preference and selectivity generated by the model are similar to the patterns seen in the visual cortex of macaque monkey and cat and correspond to a neural projection that maps a more than two-dimensional feature space onto a two-dimensional cortical surface under the constraint that shape and position of the receptive fields of the neurons vary smoothly over the cortical surface.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.87.21.8345