Responses of neurons in cat's lateral suprasylvian area to moving light and dark stimuli.

About 55% of the cells in the cat lateral suprasylvian area were truly direction-sensitive to moving light and dark spots. For these cells the preferred direction of stimulus movement was the same for the light and dark spots. The most significant effects of the reversal of stimulus contrast was a change in the strength of the responses. A population of "dark-sensitive" neutrons was found that responded vigorously to the movement of dark spots but only very weakly to the movement of light spots. These neurons were only weakly sensitive to stationary flashing lights and responded with On/Off discharges over the whole of their receptive fields.