Dynamic stabilization of receptive fields of cortical neurons (VI) during fixation of gaze in the macaque

✍ Scribed by B. C. Motter; G. F. Poggio

• Publisher: Springer-Verlag
• Year: 1990
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 672 KB
• Volume: 83
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0014-4819
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00232191

✦ Synopsis

The positions of receptive field borders of striate cortical neurons were measured repeatedly in awake monkeys during attentive fixation of a small target. The border position, as marked by the onset of evoked activity in response to a moving stimulus, did not show the variability expected from previous measures of eye position variability during fixation. Measured variability was smaller than expected. Trial-by-trial comparisons suggest that receptive field borders are not shifted by the small eye movements occurring during attentive fixation. It is our hypothesis that attentive fixation engages a mechanism that gates incoming information to achieve a stabilization of the receptive field relative to the external world. Such a dynamic positional compensation may underlie preliminary evidence showing that the response of stereo-sensitive neurons in striate cortex is consistent with stimulus disparity measures and, within limits, does not reflect the retinal disparities produced by the changes in binocular alignment during fixation.