Comparative study on direction selectivity and functional organization of the primary visual cortical cells in monkeys and cats

Although the directionally selective cells in many visual cortical areas are organized in columnar manner, the functional organization of direction selectivity of area VI in the monkey still remains unclear. We quantitatively studied the proportion of directionally selective cells, direction selectivity and the functional organization of the striate cortical cells in the monkey and compared those with the cat. The results show that the direction selectivity and directional organization of striate cortical cells in the monkey are significantly weaker than those in the cat, suggesting that the species difference between the two kinds of animal is related to their different anatomic pathways.