[Structure of the complex receptive field of the visual cortex in the cat].

This most common type of a complex receptive field was analyzed whose response contains modulated and unmodulated components. Application of the mask covering a half of the field increased (according to the filter theory) the bandwidth of the field as a spatial frequency filter due to appearance or enhancement of the response at lateral low and high frequencies. In this case the modulated components of response from each half of the field are out of phase. Analysis of this fact together with responses to thin light and dark bars permitted describing the structure of the field as consisting of linear and nonlinear subsystems converging on the complex field neuron. The linear system comprises several pairs of on- and off-subfields of corpus geniculatum. On- and off-subfields in the pair are spatially overlapped and converge on a neuron of the linear subsystem with opposite signs. The nonlinear system comprises only on- or off-subfields. Other types of complex fields are formed by various combinations of subsystems. The results evidence that the complex field is a grating spatial frequency filter.