NEURAL ENCODING OF BINOCULAR DISPARITY - ENERGY MODELS, POSITION SHIFTS AND PHASE-SHIFTS

Neurophysiological data support two models for the disparity selectivi ty of binocular simple and complex cells in primary visual cortex. The se involve binocular combinations of monocular receptive fields that a re shifted in retinal position (the position-shift model) or in phase (the phase-shift model) between the two eyes. This article presents a formal description and analysis of a binocular energy model with these forms of disparity selectivity. We propose how one might measure the relative contributions of phase and position shifts in simple and comp lex cells. The analysis also reveals ambiguities in disparity encoding that are inherent in these model neurons, suggesting a need for a sec ond stage of processing. We propose that linear pooling of the binocul ar responses across orientations and scales (spatial frequency) is cap able of producing an unambiguous representation of disparity. Copyrigh t (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.