Figure 8. The Biophysical Mechanisms Underlying the Response Properties of V1 Simple Cells.

Inhibitory models propose that all of a simple cell’s nonlinear properties arise from intracortical synaptic inhibition that is either unselective for orientation or selective for the orthogonal orientation to the feedforward input (red points). Alternatively, a simple feedforward model incorporating experimentally determined nonlinear processes can account for most of the behavior of simple cells. Black points indicate which mechanisms contribute to which simple cell properties.