Direction selectivity of simple cells in cat striate cortex to moving light bars

The response properties of 84 simple striate cells in anaesthetized (N2O/O2 supplemented with sodium pentobarbital) and paralyzed cats were examined quantitatively using narrow optimally-oriented light and dark bars moving at optimal velocities. Different cells gave two to five spatially-offset response peaks, the light bar and the dark bar response peaks alternating with one another. With only 5 exceptions, the cells had the same preferred direction for movement of the dark bar as for the light bar. Static-field plots were prepared from 32 of the 84 cells using stationary flashing bars. The receptive fields of different cells had from two to four subregions responding either at light on (ON subregion) or at light off (OFF subregion) although one cell had only a single subregion. In the preferred direction of stimulus movement cells gave either the same number of response peaks to moving bars as there were subregions or one additional response peak. The additional response peak, termed a boundary response, always occurred at the end of the sequence of response peaks and was always completely direction selective. The direction selectivities of the individual response peaks in the responses from 49 of the 84 cells were analyzed. To ensure that each response peak and the corresponding peak in the opposite direction both came from the same subregion, the 49 cells were selected on the basis of having a response in the nonpreferred direction sufficient for analysis and of having a stimulus velocity less than 2.5 degrees/s so as to avoid significant spatial shifts of the peaks due to response latencies. For all but two of the 49 cells, the response peaks in any given profile always showed a progressively greater degree of direction selectivity as the stimulus advanced from one subregion to the next, the first subregion giving the least directionally-selective response peak and the last subregion the most directionally-selective peak. This observation was independent of the direction of stimulus motion and of the particular sequence in which the ON and the OFF subregions were traversed by the stimulus. The response patterns observed experimentally have been correlated with theoretical response patterns based on the responses of lateral geniculate neurons.