Visual, auditory and bimodal activity in the banks of the lateral suprasylvian sulcus in the cat

In addition to visually driven cells we found within the lateral suprasylvian visual cortex of cats a considerable number of auditory and/or bimodal cells. Most of the visually driven cells were direction and orientation selective with responses that were neither highly stimulus time locked nor very stable. Most of the auditory responses were also not very stable, had relatively high thresholds, and were readily habituated. Previous studies have suggested that populations of cells within the lateral suprasylvian area are specialized for the analysis of optic flow fields (Rauscheker et al., 1987; Sherk et al., 1995). Given that a remarkable proportion of cells within this area can be also driven by auditory stimuli, we hypothesize that the 'optic flow' model may be extended to the bimodal domain rather than restricted to visual clues only. This, however, remains to be corroborated experimentally.