Emergence of feature selectivity from lateral interactions in the visual cortex

This chapter focuses on the emergence of feature selectivity from lateral interactions in the visual cortex. The tuning properties of neurons responding to oriented moving stimuli result from the interplay between excitation on a short length scale and inhibition dominating at larger distances. The chapter reviews models for the dynamics of activities in cortex that are based on stereotyped intracortical interactions. These models stood at the very beginning of the mathematical description of collective phenomena in the brain. The dynamics of these models may have far-reaching consequences and explains a variety of experimental findings. The chapter shows that they might provide a novel explanation for the early development of feature maps in the visual cortex. In chains and two-dimensional neuronal layers, a Mexican-hat shaped coupling induces localized activation patterns. This simple dynamics can be related to response properties of neurons in primary visual cortex. The chapter shows that this approach can also explain the shape of orientation and direction maps as well as the relation of columnar structures to receptive field size and movement.