Statistics of lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) activity determine the segregation of ON/OFF subfields for simple cells in visual cortex

The receptive fields for simple cells in visual cortex show a strong prefer ence for edges of a particular orientation and display adjacent excitatory and inhibitory subfields. These subfields are projections from ON-center an d OFF-center lateral geniculate nucleus cells, respectively. Here we presen t a single-cell model using ON and OFF channels, a natural scene environmen t, and synaptic modification according to the Bienenstock, Cooper, and Munr o (BCM) theory. Our results indicate that lateral geniculate nucleus cells must act predominantly in the linear region around the level of spontaneous activity, to lead to the observed segregation of ON/OFF subfields.