Spatial organization of subfields in receptive fields of cells in cat striate cortex

Abstract

Spatial organization of receptive fields (RF) of cells in cat striate cortex was investigated with moving and flashing light and dark bars and with grating-patterns of a varying number of cycles. It was shown that the maximum number of subfields in a simple cell is equal to eight or the number of periods in weighting function is equal to four. Quantitative comparison of the data with the results of seven other studies allows us to suggest that the number of periods in linear component of some complex cells is close to this value. The discrepancies between the results of different authors in estimation of the number of subfields are explained by the experimental data.