Circular inhibition: a new concept in long-range interactions in the mammalian visual cortex

Horizontal long-range interactions are strongly involved in the generation of the receptive fields of visual cortical cells. Structurally imposed limitations of long-range interactions are demonstrated. In particular, it is shown that the cross-orientation inhibition scheme leads to inhomogeneous input for different cell populations which is experimentally not observed. This is not the case for circular inhibition, a new connection scheme proposed for long-range interaction. This is shown by computer simulation of the early visual system of the cat and by a simpler but analytically solvable model. The results are confirmed by applying the methods to the experimentally determined structure of the orientational hypercolumns in area 18 of the cat