Anistropic connectivity and cooperative phenomena as a basis for orientation sensitivity in the visual cortex.

A computer simulation model of the neural circuity underlying orientation sensitivity in cortical neurons is examined. The model consists of a network of 3000 neurons divided into two functionally distinct cell types: excitatory (E-cells) and inhibitory (I-cells). We demonstrate that both orientation sensitivity and shape selectivity can be accounted for by making the following assumptions: 1) thalamic afferents to a sheet of cortical neurons are retinotopically organized; 2) thalamic afferents come from a single neuron, or at most a few neurons, in the lateral geniculate nucleus; 3) cortical activity is cooperative, i.e. largely dependent on intracortical connections, some of which have anisotropies along directions parallel to the pial surface. Anisotropies are specified only by the distribution of cells which are postsynaptic to a particular neuron, without specifying the axonal or dendritic contributions. In this paper, orientation sensitivity arises through cooperative interactions among neurons having anisotropic excitatory, and isotropic inhibitory connections.