Study of spatial frequency selectivity and its spatial organization in the visual cortex through a feedforward model

A purely feedforward model has been shown to produce realistic simple cell receptive fields (RFs) that show smooth transitions between subregions and fade off gradually at the boundaries (J. Comp. Neurosci. 14 (2003) 211). Here, we show that the modeled cells also capture a wide range of spatial frequency properties of cortical cells. The shape, size and number of the subregions in the RF is found to be an important parameter in determining the frequency selectivity of the cell. The spatial frequency maps obtained through the model show a continuous distribution of spatial frequency preference across the modeled cortex and pinwheels largely co-localize with the extremes of the spatial frequency domains.