Contrast-Dependent Variations in the Excitatory Classical Receptive Field and Suppressive Nonclassical Receptive Field of Cat Primary Visual Cortex

In area V1 of cat and monkey, there is a surround region beyond the classical receptive field (CRF) which alone is unresponsive but may modulate the cell's response. This field is referred to as the "nonclassical receptive field" (nCRF). It has been reported in monkey that the extent of CRF and/or nCRF of V1 neurons is not fixed but varies with stimulus contrast. We reexamined the contrast dependence of V1 neurons in cat to determine whether this differs from previous studies in macaque. By fitting the spatial summation curves obtained at different contrasts with a difference of Gaussians model, we estimated quantitatively the effect of contrast on the spatial extent of the CRF and nCRF as well as the strength of surround suppression. Our results showed that both the CRF and nCRF expanded at low contrast, but the expansion is more marked for the CRF than for the nCRF. Although the effect of contrast on surround suppression was varied, the overall suppression increased significantly at high contrast. Moreover, the contrast-dependent change in the extent of CRF is independent of the change in suppression strength. Overall, our results in cat are in agreement with those obtained in macaque money.