Visual response properties of cortical inputs to an extrastriate cortical area in the cat

The existence of multiple areas of extrastriate visual cortex raises the question of how the response properties of each area are derived from its visual input. This question was investigated for one such area in the cat, referred to here as the Clare-Bishop area (Hubel & Wiesel, 1969); it is the region of lateral suprasylvian cortex that receives input from area 17. A novel approach was used, in which kainic acid was injected locally into the Clare-Bishop area, making it possible to record directly from afferent inputs. The response properties of the great majority of a sample of 424 presumed afferents resembled cells in areas 17 and 18. Thus, a systematic comparison was made with cells from area 17's upper layers, the source of its projection to the Clare-Bishop area (Gilbert & Kelly, 1975), to see whether these afferents had distinctive properties that might distinguish them from cells projecting to areas 18 or 19. Some differences did emerge: (1) The smallest receptive fields typical of area 17 were relatively scarce among afferents. (2) Direction-selective afferents were more abundant than were such cells in area 17. (3) End-stopped afferents were extremely rare, although end-stopped cells were common in area 17's upper layers. Despite these differences, afferents were far more similar in their properties to cells in areas 17 and 18 than to cells in the Clare-Bishop area. Compared to the latter, afferents showed major discrepancies in receptive-field size, in direction selectivity, in end-stopping, and in ocular dominance distribution. These differences seem most likely to stem from circuitry intrinsic to the Clare-Bishop area.