The relationship between response amplitude and contrast for cat striate cortical neurones

1. The activity of forty-three neurones in the cat's striate cortex in response to laterally moving sinusoidal gratings of various contrasts was recorded, in order to examine the relationship between response amplitude and contrast. 2. Neurones seemed to exhibit contrast thresholds: stimuli of very low contrast failed to evoke a change in the response amplitude from the concurrent levels of spontaneous activity. 3. The suprathreshold portion of the response-contrast relation was found to be monotonic. Typically, the relation was adequately described as linear up to contrasts of about 0.3, above which, varying degrees of saturation were evident. 4. The response-contrast relation had a higher threshold and a shallower slope when the spatial frequency was not optimal for the neurone. 5. The slope, or gain, of the response-contrast relation for a stimulus of optimal orientation and spatial frequency varied considerably from neurone to neurone. The gains of special complex cells were significantly greater than those of either standard complex cells or simple cells. 6. The distributions of contrast threshold and contrast gain were examined for their dependence on optimal spatial frequency. Contrast threshold was significantly positively correlated with optimal spatial frequency, while contrast gain was significantly negatively correlated with optimal spatial frequency. This behaviour is consistent with an optical contribution to the measured response properties of striate cortical neurones.