What resolves this contention: Whether feature-specific local recurrent excitat…

What resolves this contention: Whether feature-specific local recurrent excitation is required for mouse V1 orientation selectivity. Ko 2011 reports a measurable like-to-like connectivity rule that biases recurrence by tuning similarity; the balanced-network theory argues random recurrent wiring is sufficient to produce strong selectivity without similarity-tuned wiring. / Neurons with the same preference for oriented stimuli connected at twice the rate of neurons with orthogonal orientation preferences. / We show that even though the total feedforward and total recurrent excitatory and inhibitory inputs all have a very weak orientation selectivity, strong selectivity emerges in the neuronal spike responses if the network operates in the balanced excitation/inhibition regime.