Relationship between preferred orientation and ordinal position in neurones of cat striate cortex.

Abstract

Striate cortical cells were classified according to whether or not their preferred orientation was close to one of the "primary" orientations (horizontal, vertical or radial, i.e. directed to the area centralis) and according to their ordinal position on the afferent pathway from the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN). Among the neurones that could be driven monosynaptically from the dLGN, there was a high representation of those with a preference for the primary orientations. This was particularly evident in the case of C (complex) cells. There was no such preponderance of primary orientations among the polysynaptically activated cells. It is proposed that the asymmetry of distributio..