Collective Oscillations in the Visual Cortex

The firing patterns of populations of cells in the cat visual cortex can exhibit oscillatory responses in the range of 35 - 85 Hz. Furthermore, groups of neurons many mm's apart can be highly synchronized as long as the cells have similar orientation tuning. We investigate two basic network architectures that incorporate either nearest-neighbor or global feedback interactions and conclude that non-local feedback plays a fundamental role in the initial synchronization and dynamic stability of the oscillations.