Spatiotemporal tuning of directional neurons in mammalian and avian pretectum: A comparison of physiological properties

Abstract

Responses were recorded from 72 neurons in the wallaby's nucleus of the optic tract (NOT) during stimulation with drifting sinusoidal gratings at a range of temporal and spatial frequencies (TF and SF). Most cells (70/72) were TF tuned, but two were velocity tuned. The neurons are placed into two descriptive groups: fast and slow cells, which prefer SF/TFs of 0.06-0.6 cpd/0.4-20 Hz and 0.13-1 cpd/<1 Hz, respectively. The peak spatiotemporal tunings of the neurons are compared for motion in preferred and anti-preferred directions with little variation observed in most cases. The spatiotemporal properties of wallaby NOT are compared with those of pigeon lentiformis mesencephali: the avian homo..