Temporal Transfer Properties of the Afferent Visual System Psychophysical,Neurophysiological and Theoretical Investigations

The afferent visual system (a.v.s.) includes all those stuctures of the retina and the brain which are mainly concerned with the sensory functions of vision and not with the polysensory integration of other modalities into the visual system or with visuo-motor control mechanisms. With this definition, the a.v.s. of vertebrates includes the optical apparatus of the eye, the retina, the pathways from the eye to the brain and in mammals the geniculate body, the primary visual cortex and part of the optic tectum. In the present report, we include also the description of the temporal response characteristics of neurons of the secondary and tertiary visual cortex. We do not give, however, a description of the special “feature extracting” properties of some of these cortical neuronal systems which are relevant to the analysis of visual patterns and which are described in another chapter of this volume (Stone and Freeman, Chap. 2, p. 153). Also excluded is the description of responses of tectal neurons, which are mentioned in two other chapters of this handbook (Sprague, Berlucchi, and Rizzolatti, 1973; Grusser and Grusser-Cornehls, 1973).