Figure 8.

Simulation of the neural image carried by retinal ganglion cell axons of the optic nerve. (A, top panel) Original scene contained in a narrow strip of horizontal visual field extending from the fovea (far left) to mid periphery (30° eccentricity, far right). (B, bottom panel) The simulated neural image rendered in a uniform space containing one pixel per neuron. To create the simulation, an initially square sampling array was stretched exponentially in the horizontal direction to produce a space-variant array with horizontal spacing between adjacent cells proportional to eccentricity. Aliasing due to undersampling is evident in the misrepresentation of the zebra's stripes. Peripheral compression of the scene (i.e., “cortical magnification”) is another functionally important consequence of logarithmic space-variant sampling.