Inhibitory Fields in the Limulus Lateral Eye

The inhibition that is exerted mutually among receptor units (ommatidia) of the lateral eye of Limulus does not diminish uniformly with increasing distance between units. Instead the response of a receptor unit is most effectively inhibited by other units separated from it by approximately 1 mm (three to five receptor diameters); the effectiveness diminishes with distances both greater and less than this value. The ommatidial inhibitory field as measured by the spatial function of the inhibitory coefficients contains a uniform depression in the central region, a uniformly high annulus at some distance from the center, and a gradual tapering off toward the periphery. The field is large—covering over 30 % of the retina—and is somewhat elliptical in shape with its major axis in the anteroposterior direction on the lateral eye. A number of experiments reveal similar configurations in a sizable part of the eye. Control experiments show that the diminution of the inhibitory effects near the center of the field is not an artifact of the measuring technique and cannot be explained readily by local neural excitatory processes.