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* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jalonso{at}sunyopt.edu.
Each point in visual space is encoded at the level of the thalamus by a group of neighboring cells with overlapping receptive fields. Here we show that the receptive fields of these cells differ in size and response latency but not at random. We have found that in the cat lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) the receptive field size and response latency of neighboring neurons are significantly correlated: the larger the receptive field, the faster the response to visual stimuli. This correlation is widespread in LGN. It is found in groups of cells belonging to the same type (e.g., Y cells), and of different types (i.e., X and Y), within a specific layer or across different layers. These results indicate that the inputs from the multiple geniculate afferents that converge onto a cortical cell (~30) (Alonso et al. 2001) are likely to arrive in a sequence determined by the receptive field size of the geniculate afferents. Recent studies have shown that the peak of the spatial frequency tuning of a cortical cell shifts towards higher frequencies as the response progresses in time (Bredfeldt and Ringach 2002; Frazor et al. 2004; see also Mazer et al. 2002). Our results are consistent with the idea that these shifts in spatial frequency tuning are due to the differences in the response time course of the thalamic inputs (Frazor et al. 2004).
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