Spatio-Temporal Receptive Field Measurement of Retinal Neurons by Random Pattern Stimulation and Cross Correlation

A method is developed for the measurement of the spatio-temporal receptive field (STRF) of neurons in the retina. The test input is an unsteady visual pattern randomly modulated in both space and time, and the output is the stochastic time course of the intracellular response. The STRF is expressed in terms of the spatio-temporal Wiener kernels calculated through a special cross-correlation algorithm between the response and the stimulus-related information. The method is an extension of existing white-noise identification techniques to include the spatial domain. Consideration is given to the practical implementation of the required stimulus pattern, and has led to several alternative approaches.