Neural field description suggests feedforward mechanism of state-dependent visual receptive field changes

Cortical receptive fields have recently been shown to be wider during synchronized than during non-synchronized EEG states, where, in addition, they can shrink over time in response to flashed stimuli. In this paper we employ a neural field approach to describe the cortical activity patterns analytically. Expressions for spatio-temporal receptive fields are derived and fitted against experimental data. The model supports the idea that the observed receptive field restructuring is mainly driven by state dependent LGN firing patterns (burst vs. tonic mode)