Ocular Dominance and Patterned Lateral Connections in a Self-Organizing Model of the Primary Visual Cortex

A neural network model for the self-organization of ocular dominance and lateral connections from binocular input is presented. The self-organizing process results in a network where (1) afferent weights of each neuron organize into smooth hill-shaped receptive fields primarily on one of the retinas, (2) neurons with common eye preference form connected, intertwined patches, and (3) lateral connections primarily link regions of the same eye preference. Similar self-organization of cortical structures has been observed experimentally in strabismic kittens. The model shows how patterned lateral connections in the cortex may develop based on correlated activity and explains why lateral connection patterns follow receptive field properties such as ocular dominance.

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