Single unit receptive fields in rabbit primary binocular cortex

Visual discrimination of discontinuous figures in the rabbit

Rabbits were trained to discriminate between vertical and horizontal striations. After the 90% correct level had been reached transfer to vertical and horizontal rows of dots was studied. It was found that performance depended on the distance between adjacent dots. With angular dot separations (measured from the centers) larger than 4.9 degrees, performance was below the 75% correct level. This result is discussed in relation to the size of the receptive fields of orientation-selective neurons in the binocular visual cortex.

The temporal retina and visual discrimination in the rabbit

Two types of visual discrimination apparatus for rabbits can be distinguished: one in which the animal is free to move close to the targets and another in which the choice has to be made at a distance. Previously, it had been found that rabbits have a tendency to fixate the patterns with the temporal retina for visual discrimination in the first type of apparatus. The present experiments show that this is also the case in an apparatus where the rabbit discriminates at a distance.