ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to investigate the biological plausibility of the multiplicative inhibitory motion detector (MIMD) and its ability to account for the functional characteristics of the directionally selective movement-detecting (DSMD) neurons. It describes the fly’s primary visual system, and discusses the concept of elementary movement detection and its underlying mechanism in the fly visual system. The fly compound eye is composed of approximately 3000 to 4000 ommatidia separated from each other by screening pigment cells. The chapter proposes shunting lateral inhibition as the mechanism mediating directional selectivity at the level of the small-field movement detectors. This gives rise to the MIMD, which will be used to predict the transient and steady-state response properties as well as the spatial characteristics of the fly’s DSMD neurons. The chapter examines lateral inhibition as a description of the functional characteristics of the DSMD neurons in the lobula plate.
