Click on the image to see a PDF version (for zooming in)

Fig. 5.17. Long-range lateral connections in the ocular dominance map. The inhibitory lateral connection strengths for the two neurons in Figure 5.15 are plotted on top in gray scale, and their local neighborhood is shown in the map below (as in Figure 5.12). In both cases the strongest connections come from the neuron's near neighbors. The connections of the partly monocular neuron (a) follow the ocular dominance map structure, with strongest connections from neurons with the same eye preference (dark). As a result, the connection histogram (middle) is biased toward the right eye (dark). In contrast, the connections of strongly binocular neurons (b) are not influenced by the OD map, and their connection histograms mirror the histogram of the OD map (Figure 5.16b). Similar patterns have been found experimentally in cats (Löwel 1994; Löwel and Singer 1992).