On-center and Off-center Cell Competition Generates Oriented Receptive Fields from Non-oriented Stimuli in Kohonen's Self-organizingmap

Introduction The self-organization of sensotopic maps, in particular of visual maps, continues to be an area of great interest in computational neuroscience. In order to distinguish between the diierent map formation models and between the spe-ciic self-organization mechanisms they assume, their behavior with regard to an as large number of physiological, anatomical or theoretical constraints as possible has to be investigated. An interesting case in point is the development of oriented receptive elds from stimulus distributions or stimuli with rota-tional symmetry, i.e., without orientation. This physiologically quite plausible