‘Simplification’ of responses of complex cells in cat striate cortex: suppressive surrounds and ‘feedback’ inactivation

In mammalian striate cortex (V1), two distinct functional classes of neurones, the so‐called simple and complex cells, are routinely distinguished. They can be quantitatively differentiated from each other on the basis of the ratio between the phase‐variant (F1) component and the mean firing rate (F0) of spike responses to luminance‐modulated sinusoidal gratings (simple, F1/F0 > 1; complex, F1/F0 < 1). We investigated how recurrent cortico‐cortical connections affect the spatial phase‐variance of responses of V1 cells in the cat. F1/F0 ratios of the responses to optimally oriented drifting sine‐wave gratings covering the classical receptive field (CRF) of single V1 cells were compared to those of: (1) responses to gratings covering the CRFs combined with gratings of different orientations presented to the ‘silent’ surrounds; and (2) responses to CRF stimulation during reversible inactivation of postero‐temporal visual (PTV) cortex. For complex cells, the relative strength of the silent surround suppression on CRF‐driven responses was positively correlated with the extent of increases in F1/F0 ratios. Inactivation of PTV cortex increased F1/F0 ratios of CRF‐driven responses of complex cells only. Overall, activation of suppressive surrounds or inactivation of PTV ‘converted’ substantial proportions (50 and 30%, respectively) of complex cells into simple‐like cells (F1/F0 > 1). Thus, the simple–complex distinction depends, at least partly, on information coming from the silent surrounds and/or feedback from ‘higher‐order’ cortices. These results support the idea that simple and complex cells belong to the same basic cortical circuit and the spatial phase‐variance of their responses depends on the relative strength of different synaptic inputs.