Information conveyed by onset transients in responses of striate cortical neurons

Abstract

Normal eye movements ensure that the visual world is seen episodically, as a series of often stationary images. In this paper we characterize the responses of neurons in striate cortex to stationary grating patterns presented with abrupt onset. These responses are distinctive. In most neurons the onset of a grating gives rise to a transient discharge that decays with a time constant of 100 msec or less. The early stages of response have higher contrast gain and higher response gain than later stages. Moreover, the variability of discharge during the onset transient is disproportionately low. These factors together make the onset transient an information-rich component of response, such that ..