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Abstract

Cells in the primary visual cortex operate on the signals coming from the retina and analyze different attributes of the visual scene. To do this, cortical cells have a number of specialized receptive field properties that allow them to respond selectively to the orientation, shape, color or movement of the visual stimulus. Because cortical neurons have more complex functional features than their input cells, many of these properties must be generated within the cortex. Therefore, knowledge of intrinsic cortical connections is a basic prerequisite for understanding the neural mechanisms by which the visual cortex analyses sensory information.