Early visual pathway, RGC dipoles, and Moiré interference of RGC mosaics.

A Schematic illustration of the early visual pathway following the organization in the cat (see text for details). B Orientation selective receptive fields can arise through summation of two adjacent rotationally symmetric retinal/LGN receptive fields (RGC dipole). Shown are ON and OFF center mosaics from cat retina [26]. Colors indicate ON (red) and OFF (blue) regions of a receptive field in the LGN (left and middle) and V1 (right). For illustration, the RGC mosaic is overlaid and the two RGCs whose RFs are summed are shown as black and white dots. C Left: Moiré interference between a hexagonal ON (white dots) and OFF (black dots) RGC lattice with relative orientation Δα and lattice constants r and r′ (black bars) creates a Moiré pattern with lattice constant S ⋅ r. Middle: sampling from this RGC mosaic as described in B (and text) yields a periodic orientation preference pattern through Moiré interference. Right: Model layout predicted by the statistical wiring model, obtained by thresholding and smoothing the pattern in the middle (see text).