Rapid adaptation in visual cortex to the structure of images

Complex cells in striate cortex of macaque showed a rapid pattern-specific adaptation. Adaptation made cells more sensitive to orientation change near the adapting orientation. It reduced correlations among the responses of p opulations of cells, thereby increasing the information transmitted by each action potential. These changes were brought about by brief exposures to s tationary patterns, on the time scale of a single fixation. Thus, if succes sive fixations expose neurons' receptive fields to images with similar but not identical structure, adaptation will remove correlations and improve di scriminability.