Local and global principles of striate cortical organization: an advanced model

Abstract

A model of the functional architecture in monkey striate cortex is proposed, based on recent data, in which the global structure is a result of the local structure. The local structure itself is organized around the cytochrome oxidase blobs. It is characterized by different anisotropic distributions of preferred orientations in upper and lower layers. In particular, the upper layers show a bias for "radial" orientations and the lower layers show a bias for "concentric" orientations (Bauer and Dow 1989). This organization may derive from the symmetry of the visual field and visual system which tends to be radial or concentric rather than cartesian. Functionally, the increased sensitivities of the different radial and concentric maps of orientation and movement detectors seem to be an adaptive fit to optic flow fields on the retina during complex movements of the subject in its environment.