Possible roles of spontaneous waves and dendritic growth for retinal receptive field development Journal Article


Authors: Burgi, P. Y.; Grzywacz, N. M.
Article Title: Possible roles of spontaneous waves and dendritic growth for retinal receptive field development
Abstract: Several models of cortical development postulate that a Hebbian process fed by spontaneous activity amplifies orientation biases occurring randomly in early wiring, to form orientation selectivity. These models are not applicable to the development of retinal orientation selectivity, since they neglect the polarization of the retina's poorly branched early dendritic trees and the wavelike organization of the retina's early noise. There is now evidence that dendritic polarization and spontaneous waves are key in the development of retinal receptive fields. When models of cortical development are modified to take these factors into account, one obtains a model of retinal development in which early dendritic polarization is the seed of orientation selectivity, while the spatial extent of spontaneous waves controls the spatial profile of receptive fields and their tendency to be isotropic.
Journal Title: Neural computation
Volume: 9
Issue: 3
ISSN: 0899-7667
Publisher: Unknown  
Journal Place: United States
Date Published: 1997
Start Page: 533
End Page: 553
Language: eng
DOI/URL:
Notes: J2: Neural Comput