Spatiotemporal organization of cat lateral geniculate receptive fields.

Spatial and temporal properties of LGN receptive fields were studied by flashing a small bar of light across the field in 28 discrete steps. The flashes at each of the spatial positions were used to produce 28 PST histograms. These histograms were in turn displayed as a plane, with space on the chi axis, time on the psi axis, and probability of firing on the zota axis. These response planes demonstrate that the terms on, off, center, and surround do not adequately describe when the simplest LGN receptive field. We, therefore, introduce a new terminology describing the four major spatiotemporal components of LGN fields. The primary excitatory (PE) domain corresponds to the strongest excitatory response, the secondary excitatory (SE) domain corresponds to the second-strongest excitatory domain, the primary inhibitory (PI) domain corresponds to the strongest inhibitory domain and, finally, the secondary inhibitory (SI) domain corresponds to the second-strongest inhibitory domain. Based on the arrangement of these four domains, it is possible to divide LGN fields into four major categories: 1) homogeneous-on, on-center receptive fields which have a spatially homogeneous distribution of domains; 2) homogeneous-off, off-center receptive fields which have a spatially homogeneous distribution of domains; 3) heterogeneous-on, on-center receptive fields which have a spatially heterogeneous distribution of domains; and 4) heterogeneous-off, off-center receptive fields which have a spatially heterogeneous distribution of domains; 3) heterogeneous-on, on-center receptive fields which have a spatially heterogeneous distribution of domains; and 4) heterogeneous-off, off-center receptive fields which have a spatially heterogeneous distribution of domains. Using grating, it can be demonstrated that our heterogeneous/homogeneous fields correspond to X/Y fields, respectively. These data lead us to suggest that retinal PE domains generage LGN PE and SI domains, while retinal SE domains generate LGN SE and SI domains.