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Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience pp 1092–1106Cite as

Emergence of Orientation Selectivity in the Cerebral Cortex, Modeling

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Definition

Orientation tuning is a characteristic response property of neurons in primary visual cortex. Models of orientation tuning describe the transformation of response selectivity from lateral geniculate relay cells, which are not orientation selective, to neurons in layer 4 of the primary visual cortex. These models aim to constrain and identify the neural circuitry underlying this canonical transformation in the representation of the visual world.

Detailed Description

Introduction

The overarching goal of systems neuroscience is to explain how the sensory inputs we receive are integrated to generate appropriate behaviors. One method of achieving this goal is to study the mechanisms underlying a single computation and build models which may be applied more generally. Computations performed by the cerebral cortex are amenable to this approach due to the relative uniformity of cortical circuitry. Not only does mammalian cerebral cortex contain a common set of neuron cell types with...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Section of Neurobiology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Benjamin Scholl & Nicholas J. Priebe

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  1. Benjamin Scholl
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  2. Nicholas J. Priebe
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Correspondence to Nicholas J. Priebe .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Dieter Jaeger

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

    Ranu Jung

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Scholl, B., Priebe, N.J. (2015). Emergence of Orientation Selectivity in the Cerebral Cortex, Modeling. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6675-8_576

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