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Abstract:
The papers by Löwel and by Bonhoeffer and Grinvald in this volume do me the honour of referring to a model of the visual cortex published some time ago (Braitenberg and Braitenberg 1979). However, both fail to mention a more comprehensive and more explicit proposal which I have made since (Braitenberg 1985). It is the latter model that I want to defend here, the reason being that I still consider it most efficient in terms of the large number of facts explained and minimal number of assumptions made. In fact, in this model the only departure from a general description of cortical structure (Braitenberg and Schüz 1991) is the assumption of inhibitory neurons lumped in certain places of the visual area which probably coincide with cytochrome oxidase “blobs” (Horton and Hubel 1981). Among other things, the variation of orientation sensitivity in different places on the cortical surface is fully explained by this.
