Simulation of Neuronal Map Formation in the Primary Visual Cortex

For nearly all animals the perception of moving objects is of vital importance to get alarmed by an approaching predator or for detecting suitable prey for the animal itself. With regard to neuronal coding of visual-motion signals, the primary visual cortex is the brain area which contains specialized neurons that selectively respond to certain features of a stimulus perceived by the photo sensors in the retina of the eye. In this project we have focused on the investigation of the emergence of direction-selective cell responses, i.e., the response properties of neurons that are activated only or at least most strongly whenever a luminance step within the visual input is moving in a certain characteristic direction over the cell’s receptive field in the retina. Such a cell thus shows a response preference for this particular direction of stimulus movement. Another important response specificity of visual neurons is their orientation selectivity, because the activation of a cell is also dependent on the orientation of a luminance step within its receptive field.