Responses of cells in the cat lateral geniculate nucleus to moving stimuli at various levels of light and dark adaptation

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Abstract
The responses of neurones in laminae A and A1 of the cat lateral geniculate nucleus to moving stimuli were investigated at different background luminances. Moving bright slits, dark bars and edges were employed; the contrast of stimuli against the background was held constant. Background intensities varied from 10−3 to 102 td. Responses as stimuli passed across the centres of LGN receptive fields became stronger with increasing levels of light adaptation up to 10−1–101 td and then remained constant. Responses as stimuli passed through surround regions altered qualitatively with adaptation level, generally increasing in strength and complexity with background luminance. As a bright slit for on-centre cells or dark bar for off-centre cells left the surround, in almost all units a strong secondary peak could be elicited by an appropriate selection of the adaptation conditions. Many features of the responses to moving stimuli could not be predicted from the responses to stationary stimuli under different adaptation conditions described in the previous paper.