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Volume 11 Issue 1, January 2008

On- and off-center afferents from the lateral geniculate nucleus form two separate channels of visual processing, which are thought to converge in the primary visual cortex. Jin and colleagues now report that this may not be the case. In a given cortical territory, most of the converging afferents were likely to be of the same contrast polarity, and off-center afferents dominated the cortical representation. The cover illustrates the parallel on and off channels as well as the off pathway dominance in central vision, as the small black dots on the white background are easier to see than the reverse contrast. (p 88)

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