THE INFLUENCE OF NEURAL ACTIVITY AND INTRACORTICAL CONNECTIVITY ON THE PERIODICITY OF OCULAR DOMINANCE STRIPES

Several factors may interact to determine the periodicity of ocular do minance stripes in cat and monkey visual cortex. Previous theoretical work has suggested roles for the width of cortical interactions and th e strength of between-eye correlations. Here, a model based on an expl icit optimization is presented that allows a thorough characterization of how these and other parameters of the afferent input could affect ocular dominance stripe periodicity. The principle conclusions are tha t increasing the width of within-eye correlations leads to wider colum ns, and, surprisingly, that increasing the width of cortical interacti ons can sometimes lead to narrower columns.