The orientation and direction selectivity of cells in macaque visual cortex

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Abstract

Quantitative data are presented on the orientation and direction specificity of the responses of cells in macaque monkey striate cortex. There is a bimodal distribution of direction-specific and nondirection-specific cells, with similar orientation tuning in each class. Cells range in orientation bandwidth at half amplitude from 6° to 360° (i.e. no orientation tuning), with a median near 40°. Fovealparafoveal and simple-complex subsamples show similar ranges of orientation bandwidths as well as similar medians (the bandwidths being somewhat broader than those found in cat cortex). The foveal subsample and a high-spatial-frequency subsample have more horizontal and vertical optimal orientations than oblique ones. Most cells show inhibition to some orientations, as well as excitation to others. Minimum-response orientations are generally less than 90° from the optimal orientation—indicating maximum inhibition adjacent to the excitatory orientations. Three simple receptive field models are shown to differ in their abilities to account for these results.

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