Spatio temporal receptive field

The spectro-temporal receptive field or spatio-temporal receptive field (STRF) of a neuron represents which types of stimuli excite or inhibit that neuron. "Spectro-temporal" refers most commonly to audition, where the neuron's response depends on frequency versus time, while "spatio-temporal" refers to vision, where the neuron's response depends on spatial location versus time. Thus they are not exactly the same concept, but both are referred to as STRF and serve a similar role in the analysis of neural responses. If linearity is assumed, the neuron can be modeled as having a time-varying firing rate equal to the convolution of the stimulus with the STRF. Auditory STRFs The example STRF here is for an auditory neuron from the area CM (caudal medial) of a male zebra finch, when played conspecific birdsong. The colour of this plot shows the effect of sound on this neuron: this neuron tends to be excited by sound from about 2.5 kHz to 7 kHz heard by the animal 12 ms ago, but it is inhibited by sound in the same frequency range from about 18 ms ago. Visual STRFs See Dario L. Ringach Receptive Fields in Macaque Primary Visual Cortex Spatial Structure and Symmetry of Simple-Cell (2002) J. H. van Hateren and D. L. Ruderman Independent component analysis of natural image sequences yields spatio-temporal filters similar to simple cells in primary visual cortex (2002)