Linear analysis of the responses of simple cells in the cat visual cortex

Spatial response profiles to stationary and moving stimuli and spatial frequency tuning curves to drifting sinusoidal gratings were recorded from a series of cells in the simple family. The spatial response profiles were recorded both to stationary flashing bars and sinusoidal gratings as well as to light and dark bars and edges and gratings moving at the optimal velocity. On the assumption that cells in the simple family operate linearly, spatial response profiles recorded experimentally were compared with those predicted by inverse Fourier transformation of the spatial frequency tuning curves. Conversely, the spatial frequency tuning curves recorded experimentally were compared with those predicted from the response profiles to moving and stationary stimuli. As a result of these comparisons, it is clear that moving stimuli provide a more accurate estimate of the spatial organization of the receptive field than do stationary stimuli. Cells with the higher optimal spatial frequencies tended to have narrower bandwidths. The simple cell with the narrowest bandwidth (0.94 octave) had five, and possibly six, subregions in the spatial response profile to moving light and dark bars, the largest number of subregions we encountered.