Some evidence concerning the physiological basis of the periphery effect in the cat's retina

Summary Peripheral regions of retinal ganglion cell receptive fields were investigated in cerveau isolé cats using automatically presented moving stimuli. By presenting appropriate stimulus configurations it was shown that the excitatory response to peripherally moving objects (the periphery effect) is not due to an extension of receptive field surround properties into the periphery. The differential effects of solid and striped stimuli indicated that the effectiveness of an object in eliciting the periphery effect is related to the amount of moving edge which it presents. Arguments are presented that the periphery effect results from interactions between spatially separated receptive field organizations. Certain difficulties which these findings raise with respect to the current definition of receptive field are discussed.