Center for Research in Neurobiology 'Daniel Bovet'

Voltage-sensitive dye imaging experiments in primary visual cortex (V1) have shown that local, oriented visual stimuli elicit stable orientation-selective activation within the stimulus retinotopic footprint (Chavane et al 2011). The cortical activation dynamically extends far beyond the retinotopic footprint, but the peripheral spread stays non-selective - a surprising finding given a number of anatomo-functional studies showing the orientation specificity of long-range connections. Here it is used a computational model to investigate this apparent discrepancy by studying the expected population response using known published anatomical constraints. It is founded substantial overlap between the anatomically relevant parameter range and a steep decay in orientation selective activation that is consistent with the imaging experiments.