An analytical model for the disparity selectivity profiles of binocular neurons

Abstract

Binocular disparities arise from the positional differences of scene features projected in the two retinae. Disparity-selective neurons are known to exist in several areas of the visual cortex of cats and monkeys, and have been associated with mechanisms of gaze stabilization and stereoscopic depth perception. Such neurons appear with different response profiles, leading to their classification as tuned excitatory, tuned inhibitory, tuned near, tuned far, and reciprocal (near and far) neurons. Here we propose an analytical model for the shape of these disparity selectivity curves, showing that they can be approximated as either the Green's function or the homogeneous solution to a second-order differential equation derived from a signal matching constraint. This means that the mathematical solution to the matching problem involves functions which are similar in shape to the selectivity profiles of the binocular neurons.