An abstract model of a cortical hypercolumn

An abstract model of a cortical hypercolumn is presented. This model could replicate experimental findings relating to the orientation tuning mechanism in the primary visual cortex. Properties of the orientation selective cells in the primary visual cortex, like contrast-invariance and response saturation, were demonstrated in simulations. We hypothesize that broadly tuned inhibition and local excitatory connections are sufficient for achieving this behavior. We have shown that the local intracortical connectivity of the model is to some extent biologically plausible.