Silent periodic cells in the cat striate cortex.

A class of neurons called silent periodic cells, having properties intermediate between those in the simple and complex families, has been discriminated in the cat striate cortex. Silent periodic cells have relatively small receptive fields, a low spontaneous activity (i.e. relatively silent) and a preference for relatively slow stimulus velocities (less than 3 degrees/sec). In addition they give a mixed on/off response to a stationary flashing bar over virtually the whole of the receptive field with usually somewhat stronger on responses in some locations and stronger off responses in others (partial phase sensitivity). The most characteristic properties of these cells are, however, found in their responses to gratings, namely the nonlinearity manifested by the absence of a null point to a stationary flashing grating, a spatial periodicity revealed by a clearly modulated discharge to drifting gratings of medium and high spatial frequency and, finally, a very sharp spatial frequency tuning curve with a half-sensitivity bandwidth between 0.5 and 0.95 octave, i.e. narrower than that of simple cells whose bandwidths are usually above 1 octave. Silent periodic cells resemble B-cells that have been described in other studies.