Schedule Jul 26, 2001
Lateral Inhibition and Excitation in Vision
Dr. Sebastian Seung
http://hebb.mit.edu/people/seung/
The phenomenon of feature selectivity has long been observed in sensory neurons of the brain, but our understanding of its mechanisms is still incomplete. In visual areas of the brain, there has been a debate over the relative importance of feedforward and recurrent synapses in generating feature selectivity. This lecture will discuss the classic work of Hartline and Ratliff on the role that lateral inhibition plays in shaping the response properties of photoreceptors in the Limulus retina. This will be followed by an account of competing theories for the generation of orientation selectivity in primary visual cortex. These include the Hubel-Wiesel model, according to which orientation selectivity is due to the spatial configuration of thalamo-cortical afferents, and other models in which cortico-cortical interactions play an essential role.

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