The receptive field, or sensory space, has been defined by Alonso and Chen as:
a portion of sensory space that can elicit neuronal responses when stimulated. The sensory space can be defined in a single dimension (e.g. carbon chain length of an odorant), two dimensions (e.g. skin surface), or multiple dimensions (e.g. space, time[,] and tuning properties of a visual receptive field). The neuronal response can be defined as firing rate (i.e. number of action potentials generated by a neuron) or include also subthreshold activity (i.e. depolarizations and hyperpolarizations in membrane potential that do not generate action potentials).
A sensory space can be dependent of an animal's location. For a particular sound wave traveling in an appropriate transmission medium, by means of sound localization, an auditory space would amount to a reference system that continuously shifts as the animal moves (taking into consideration the space inside the ears as well). Conversely, receptive fields can be largely independent of the animal's location, as in the case of place cells. A sensory space can also map into a particular region on an animal's body. For example, it could be a hair in the cochlea or a piece of skin, retina, or tongue or other part of an animal's body. Receptive fields have been identified for neurons of the auditory system, the somatosensory system, and the visual system. The term receptive field was first used by Sherrington in 1906 to describe the area of skin from which a scratch reflex could be elicited in a dog. In 1938, Hartline started to apply the term to single neurons, this time from the frog retina. This concept of receptive fields can be extended further up the nervous system. If many sensory receptors all form synapses with a single cell further up, they collectively form the receptive field of that cell. For example, the receptive field of a ganglion cell in the retina of the eye is composed of input from all of the photoreceptors which synapse with it, and a group of ganglion cells in turn forms the receptive field for a cell in the brain. This process is called convergence. Receptive fields have been used in modern artificial deep neural networks that work with local operations.
Auditory system The auditory system processes the temporal and spectral (i.e. frequency) characteristics of sound waves, so the receptive fields of neurons in the auditory system are modeled as spectro-temporal patterns that cause the firing rate of the neuron to modulate with the auditory stimulus. Auditory receptive fields are often modeled as spectro-temporal receptive fields (STRFs), which are the specific pattern in the auditory domain that causes modulation of the firing rate of a neuron. Linear STRFs are created by first calculating a spectrogram of the acoustic stimulus, which determines how the spectral density of the acoustic stimulus changes over time, often using the Short-time Fourier transform (STFT). Firing rate is modeled over time for the neuron, possibly using a peristimulus time histogram if combining over multiple repetitions of the acoustic stimulus. Then, linear regression is used to predict the firing rate of that neuron as a weighted sum of the spectrogram. The weights learned by the linear model are the STRF, and represent the specific acoustic pattern that causes modulation in the firing rate of the neuron. STRFs can also be understood as the transfer function that maps an acoustic stimulus input to a firing rate response output. A theoretical explanation of the computational function of early auditory receptive fields is given in.
Somatosensory system In the somatosensory system, receptive fields are regions of the skin or of internal organs. Some types of mechanoreceptors have large receptive fields, while others have smaller ones. Large receptive fields allow the cell to detect changes over a wider area, but lead to a less precise perception. Thus, the fingers, which require the ability to detect fine detail, have many, densely packed (up to 500 per cubic cm) mechanoreceptors with small receptive fields (around 10 square mm), while the back and legs, for example, have fewer receptors with large receptive fields. Receptors with large receptive fields usually have a "hot spot", an area within the receptive field (usually in the center, directly over the receptor) where stimulation produces the most intense response. Tactile-sense-related cortical neurons have receptive fields on the skin that can be modified by experience or by injury to sensory nerves resulting in changes in the field's size and position. In general these neurons have relatively large receptive fields (much larger than those of dorsal root ganglion cells). However, the neurons are able to discriminate fine detail due to patterns of excitation and inhibition relative to the field which leads to spatial resolution.
Visual system
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