Question

Explain how information from retinal ganglion cells can be used by neurons in the striate cortex that function as feature detectors.

Answer 1

Feature detectors are the neurons that respond to specific features of the stimulus such as orientation or direction of movements. Feature detector cells have special property to recognize specificfeatures of visual inputs. Nerve cells itn the striate cortex responds selectively to stationary and moving lines and respond to more complex obiects and acts as feature detectors. Cells in the striate cortex integrate information from a variety of visual cells in such a way that a cell may respond to visual stimuli that are more complicated than those of ganglion cells in the retina. The receptive field for each of a set of ganglion cells may reportto a cell in the striate cortex in such a way that a bar of light that stimulates the center of each ganglion cell receptive field causes the striate cell to fire. Stimuli that do not precisely stimulate the center fields of an array of ganglion cells would not stimulate the striate cortex cell. Different features could be built up from different converging patterns to the striate cortex.