Responses to moving slits by single units in cat striate cortex

Summary A quantitative study has been made of the responses to moving slit stimuli by single units in the cat striate cortex whose receptive fields lay within 5° of the visual axis. Special attention was given to finding the optimal stimulus parameters including slit width, length, orientation and speed. The analysis was largely based on averaged response vs. time histograms. Using the classification of simple and complex responses types, the units were further subdivided on the basis of the number of modes in the response and on the presence or absence of directional selectivity. Simple unimodal units with directional selectivity (SUDS) had the most specific stimulus requirements and nearly always had zero background activity. Complex units usually had a high level of background activity. SUDS units also showed a preference for horizontally- and vertically ****-orientated stimuli. Whenever the response survived reversal of contrast the directional selectivity remained independent of the change. Optimal stimulus speeds varied widely from unit to unit with a mean at 4°/sec: simple bimodal units and complex units tended to have higher optimal stimulus speeds and responded over a wider range of speeds than did simple unimodal units. While SUDS units with very small receptive fields tended to prefer slowly moving stimuli, in general there was no correlation between receptive field size and optimal stimulus speed.Selby Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences.