Receptive field
The receptive field, or sensory space, has been defined by Alonso and Chen as:
a portion of sensory space that can elicit neuronal responses when stimulated. The sensory space can be defined in a single dimension, two dimensions, or multiple dimensions. The neuronal response can be defined as firing rate or include also subthreshold activity.
A sensory space can be dependent of an animal's location. For a particular sound wave traveling in an appropriate transmission medium, by means of sound localization, an auditory space would amount to a reference system that continuously shifts as the animal moves. Conversely, receptive fields can be largely independent of the animal's location, as in the case of place cells. A sensory space can also map into a particular region on an animal's body. For example, it could be a hair in the cochlea or a piece of skin, retina, or tongue or other part of an animal's body. Receptive fields have been identified for neurons of the auditory system, the somatosensory system, and the visual system.
The term receptive field was first used by Sherrington in 1906 to describe the area of skin from which a scratch reflex could be elicited in a dog. In 1938, Hartline started to apply the term to single neurons, this time from the frog retina.
This concept of receptive fields can be extended further up the nervous system. If many sensory receptors all form synapses with a single cell further up, they collectively form the receptive field of that cell. For example, the receptive field of a ganglion cell in the retina of the eye is composed of input from all of the photoreceptors which synapse with it, and a group of ganglion cells in turn forms the receptive field for a cell in the brain. This process is called convergence.
Receptive fields have been used in modern artificial deep neural networks that work with local operations.
Auditory system
The auditory system processes the temporal and spectral characteristics of sound waves, so the receptive fields of neurons in the auditory system are modeled as spectro-temporal patterns that cause the firing rate of the neuron to modulate with the auditory stimulus. Auditory receptive fields are often modeled as spectro-temporal receptive fields, which are the specific pattern in the auditory domain that causes modulation of the firing rate of a neuron. Linear STRFs are created by first calculating a spectrogram of the acoustic stimulus, which determines how the spectral density of the acoustic stimulus changes over time, often using the Short-time Fourier transform. Firing rate is modeled over time for the neuron, possibly using a peristimulus time histogram if combining over multiple repetitions of the acoustic stimulus. Then, linear regression is used to predict the firing rate of that neuron as a weighted sum of the spectrogram. The weights learned by the linear model are the STRF, and represent the specific acoustic pattern that causes modulation in the firing rate of the neuron. STRFs can also be understood as the transfer function that maps an acoustic stimulus input to a firing rate response output. A theoretical explanation of the computational function of early auditory receptive fields is given in.Somatosensory system
In the somatosensory system, receptive fields are regions of the skin or of internal organs. Some types of mechanoreceptors have large receptive fields, while others have smaller ones.Large receptive fields allow the cell to detect changes over a wider area, but lead to a less precise perception. Thus, the fingers, which require the ability to detect fine detail, have many, densely packed mechanoreceptors with small receptive fields, while the back and legs, for example, have fewer receptors with large receptive fields. Receptors with large receptive fields usually have a "hot spot", an area within the receptive field where stimulation produces the most intense response.
Tactile-sense-related cortical neurons have receptive fields on the skin that can be modified by experience or by injury to sensory nerves resulting in changes in the field's size and position. In general these neurons have relatively large receptive fields. However, the neurons are able to discriminate fine detail due to patterns of excitation and inhibition relative to the field which leads to spatial resolution.
Visual system
In the visual system, receptive fields are volumes in visual space. They are smallest in the fovea where they can be a few minutes of arc like a dot on this page, to the whole page. For example, the receptive field of a single photoreceptor is a cone-shaped volume comprising all the visual directions in which light will alter the firing of that cell. Its apex is located in the center of the lens and its base essentially at infinity in visual space. Traditionally, visual receptive fields were portrayed in two dimensions, but these are simply slices, cut along the screen on which the researcher presented the stimulus, of the volume of space to which a particular cell will respond. In the case of binocular neurons in the visual cortex, receptive fields do not extend to optical infinity. Instead, they are restricted to a certain interval of distance from the animal, or from where the eyes are fixating.The receptive field is often identified as the region of the retina where the action of light alters the firing of the neuron. In retinal ganglion cells, this area of the retina would encompass all the photoreceptors, all the rods and cones from one eye that are connected to this particular ganglion cell via bipolar cells, horizontal cells, and amacrine cells. In binocular neurons in the visual cortex, it is necessary to specify the corresponding area in both retinas. Although these can be mapped separately in each retina by shutting one or the other eye, the full influence on the neuron's firing is revealed only when both eyes are open.
Hubel and Wiesel advanced the theory that receptive fields of cells at one level of the visual system are formed from input by cells at a lower level of the visual system. In this way, small, simple receptive fields could be combined to form large, complex receptive fields. Later theorists elaborated this simple, hierarchical arrangement by allowing cells at one level of the visual system to be influenced by feedback from higher levels.
Receptive fields have been mapped for all levels of the visual system from photoreceptors, to retinal ganglion cells, to lateral geniculate nucleus cells, to visual cortex cells, to extrastriate cortical cells. However, because the activities of neurons at any one location are contingent on the activities of neurons across the whole system, i.e. are contingent on changes in the whole field, it is unclear whether a local description of a particular "receptive field" can be considered a general description, robust to changes in the field as a whole. Studies based on perception do not give the full picture of the understanding of visual phenomena, so the electrophysiological tools must be used, as the retina, after all, is an outgrowth of the brain.
In retinal ganglion and V1 cells, the receptive field consists of the center and surround region.
Retinal ganglion cells
Each ganglion cell or optic nerve fiber bears a receptive field, increasing with intensifying light. In the largest field, the light has to be more intense at the periphery of the field than at the center, showing that some synaptic pathways are more preferred than others.The organization of ganglion cells' receptive fields, composed of inputs from many rods and cones, provides a way of detecting contrast, and is used for detecting objects' edges. Each receptive field is arranged into a central disk, the "center", and a concentric ring, the "surround", each region responding oppositely to light. For example, light in the centre might increase the firing of a particular ganglion cell, whereas light in the surround would decrease the firing of that cell.
Stimulation of the center of an on-center cell's receptive field produces depolarization and an increase in the firing of the ganglion cell, stimulation of the surround produces a hyperpolarization and a decrease in the firing of the cell, and stimulation of both the center and surround produces only a mild response. An off-center cell is stimulated by activation of the surround and inhibited by stimulation of the center.
Photoreceptors that are part of the receptive fields of more than one ganglion cell are able to excite or inhibit postsynaptic neurons because they release the neurotransmitter glutamate at their synapses, which can act to depolarize or to hyperpolarize a cell, depending on whether there is a metabotropic or ionotropic receptor on that cell.
The center-surround receptive field organization allows ganglion cells to transmit information not merely about whether photoreceptor cells are exposed to light, but also about the differences in firing rates of cells in the center and surround. This allows them to transmit information about contrast. The size of the receptive field governs the spatial frequency of the information: small receptive fields are stimulated by high spatial frequencies, fine detail; large receptive fields are stimulated by low spatial frequencies, coarse detail. Retinal ganglion cell receptive fields convey information about discontinuities in the distribution of light falling on the retina; these often specify the edges of objects. In dark adaptation, the peripheral opposite activity zone becomes inactive, but, since it is a diminishing of inhibition between center and periphery, the active field can actually increase, allowing more area for summation.