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L Maffei

Publications and source records attributed to L Maffei.

At least 145 records · Page 8Linked to original sources

Binocular interaction in strabismic kittens deprived of Vision.

Artificial strabismus in kittens decreases the proportion of binocularly driven units in area 17 of the cortex. This change in the binocular interaction of cortical cells also takes place if the kittens are deprived of vision from the day in which the strabismus is surgically produced to the day of the electrophysiological recording. Thus, altered motility of the eyes per se is sufficient to affect binocular interaction in the neurons of area 17 of the cortex.

Action Potentials↗

Behavioural contrast sensitivity of the cat in various visual meridians.

1. The contrast sensitivity of the cat as a function of the spatial frequency of the visual stimulus was determined by using behavioural techniques.2. No statistically significant difference was found for the contrast sensitivity thresholds at various orientations of the stimulus.3. A comparison of the contrast sensitivity curve of the cat with that of the human shows that the two species have rather different characteristics of visual spatial resolution.

Animals↗

Neural correlate of perceptual adaptation to gratings.

Exposure of simple cells of the cat striate cortex to high-contrast drifting gratings greatly reduces the subsequent response of the cells to low-contrast gratings. This adaptation effect has an average duration of 30 seconds and shows interocular transfer and selectivity for spatial frequency and orientation. This effect is strikingly similar to the perceptual adaptation to high-contrast gratings.

Action Potentials↗

The contrast sensitivity of the cat.

1. The experiments were carried out on pretrigeminal cats.2. By recording potentials evoked from the visual cortex by a grating stimulus, it was established that there was a linear relation between the voltage generated and the logarithm of the contrast of the grating.3. The voltage evoked by the grating was independent of the orientation of the grating.4. It has previously been shown in man that, if the contrast is determined by an extrapolation to the point at which a zero voltage occurs, this value corresponds to the psychophysical threshold. On the assumption that the threshold of the cat also occurs at zero voltage, thresholds for a number of spatial frequencies and orientations were determined.5. When the threshold sensitivity function for the cat is compared with man it is found to be displaced to lower spatial frequencies by a factor of about ten. This means that while the cat cannot see such high spatial frequencies as man, it can see lower frequencies better than man.

Animals↗

Contrast perception and electrophysiological correlates.

1. Previous findings show that the amplitude of the human visual potentials evoked by gratings alternating in phase at several c/s is linearly related to the logarithm of the grating contrast.2. Similar previous experiments on the cat have shown that both the amplitude of evoked potentials and the amplitude of the response of simple cortical cells to alternating gratings increase linearly with the logarithm of the contrast. No such relation is found for single neurones in the retina or in the lateral geniculate body.3. In this work the contrast of a grating is evaluated psychophysically by human subjects in a range of more than 10 times above threshold, using a binocular matching technique.4. The apparent contrast is found to increase linearly with the logarithm of the stimulus contrast.5. The conclusion is drawn that the linear relation between apparent contrast and the logarithm of the objective contrast might be the outcome of a process of elaboration that is carried out at the simple cell level.

Evoked Potentials↗