Self-organizing map develops V1 organization given biologically realistic input

In this paper we show that, given biologically realistic retinal wave input, our self-organizing map extended (SOME) model can develop all of the features of the maps found in the primary visual cortex (V1) of infant monkeys with no prior visual experience, and all but one of the features found in adult V1. This supports the idea that retinal waves cannot fully account for the adult feature map structure. We therefore predict that if retinal waves alone are responsible for the organization of V1 in infant monkeys with no visual experience then that organization differs from the adult in a non-trivial way.