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Fig. 11.6. Activating neurons with collinear and cocircular RFs. The plot shows two representative cases of coactivation, i.e. two neurons responding simultaneously to a long input across their receptive fields. (a) The two receptive fields (black bars) are precisely aligned on a straight path (dashed line). If a long input is presented on this path, the two neurons will respond maximally, and the connection between them becomes stronger, according to normalized Hebbian learning. (b) Even though the two receptive fields are slightly misaligned on the path, they can still weakly activate and the connection will become stronger. As a result, neurons that represent cocircular contours develop significant lateral connections, although not as strong as those that represent straight lines. Reprinted with permission from Choe and Miikkulainen (2004), copyright 2004 by Springer.