Simple cells may lie at the basis of mach bands: evidence from physiological studies in the cat's visual cortex

Mach bands are a visual illusion evoked by a luminance ramp dividing two luminance plateaux (blurred edges), but not by sharp edges. Recently, two physiology-based models have tried to cope with the psychophysical data concerning this phenomenon. The basic components of both models are neurons with even- or odd-symmetric receptive fields (RFs). Both models predict that odd-symmetric cells respond better to sharp edges, while even-symmetric cells respond better to blurred ones. We have measured the responses of 34 primary visual cortex simple cells of the cat to blurred edges of various degrees. Twenty-one cells had RFs of even symmetry, responding best to blurred edges than to sharp ones. The rest were odd-symmetric cells, of which 12 responded best to sharp edges, and only one exceptional cell responded best to a 0.85 degrees-wide edge. Thus, the different cell types responded as predicted by the two different Mach band models. Simple cells may thus serve as the physiological basis of the psychophysical phenomenon of Mach bands. Furthermore, our evidence suggests the existence of inhibition between odd- and even-symmetric cells, as predicted by one of the models.