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- E. Erwin, K. Obermayer, and
K. Schulten. Models of Orientation and Ocular Dominance Columns in the
Visual Cortex: a Critical Comparison.
.
Neural Comput., 7:425-468, 1995.
(FTP Gzipped PostScript, 55 pages, 111 kb)
Orientation and ocular dominance maps in the primary visual cortex
of mammals are among the most thoroughly investigated of the patterns in the
cerebral cortex. A considerable amount of work has been dedicated to
unraveling both their detailed structure and the neural mechanisms that
underlie their formation and development. Many schemes have been proposed,
some of which are in competition. Some models focus on development of
receptive fields while others focus on the structure of cortical maps, i.e.,
the arrangement of receptive field properties across the cortex. Each model
used different means to determine its success at reproducing experimental map
patterns, often relying principally on visual comparison. Experimental data
are becoming available that allow a more careful evaluation of models. In
this contribution more than 10 of the most prominent models of cortical map
formation and structure are critically evaluated and compared with the most
recent experimental findings from macaque striate cortex. Comparisons are
based on properties of the predicted or measured cortical map patterns. We
introduce several new measures for comparing experimental and model map data
that reveal important differences between models. We expect that the use of
these measures will improve current models by helping determine parameters to
match model maps to experimental data now becoming available from a variety
of species. Our study reveals that (1) despite apparent differences, many
models are based on similar principles and consequently make similar
predictions, (2) several models produce orientation map patterns that are not
consistent with the experimental data from macaques, regardless of the
plausibility of the models suggested physiological implementations, and (3)
no models have yet fully accounted for both the local and the global
relationships between orientation and ocular dominance map
patterns.
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