The applicability of the basic principles of the correlation model to the description of the activity of a movement detecting neuron in the third optic ganglion of the fly's visual system has been investigated. This wide field neuron is supposed to sum the outputs of a large number of correlators (i.e. multiplying units followed by time averagers) that are distributed over almost the entire eye. The model describes and predicts the experimental results in a satisfactory way if a uniformly distributed system or correlators is assumed. The sampling base of the correlators in this system equals the interommatidial angles deltaphi. The half width of the spatial sensitivity distribution of the visual inputs of the correlators, deltarho, is equal to the half width of the retinula cells of the 1--6 system.
When the receptive-field profiles of the different units in the primary visual cortex are described by a series of different functions which are given by a Gaussian distribution and its first, second, and so on, spatial derivatives, a full analysis of the input-output processing of these units (under the assumption of linearity for small signals) can be achieved for a wide variety of optical stimuli consisting of closely adjacent fields modulated independently in intensity. Once the input-output relationship for one particular unit has been obtained, it is possible to calculate in a straightforward manner the spatial representation of the stimulus pattern in a two-dimensional distribution of such units. Investigations are reported into how a stimulus pattern (a dark or bright bar between two fields modulated in illuminance) is represented in a hierarchical structure of such layers of units, each layer containing just one type of receptive-field profile from the Gaussian family of derivatives. It is shown that if a visual percept is associated with the behaviour of the extrema or zero-crossings of the representations in the first few layers of such an architecture, a complete description can be given of the experimental results obtained by Gregory and Heard in their psychophysical experiments on illusory movement perception induced by luminance intensity modulations.
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