A model for development of Gabor-receptive fields in simple cortical cells.

A model is proposed for the development of Gabor-like receptive fields of simple cells in the visual cortex. We assume that several cortical cells are arranged in a ring, with mutual excitatory or inhibitory connections of fixed weight. The cells also receive excitatory synapses from LGN; the synaptic weights are initially set random and then modified based on correlated dark activity in LGN. Each cell finally acquires a simple receptive field best described by a Gabor function. Spatial phase in the function varies regularly from 0 to 2 pi with rotation along the ring.