TY - JOUR T1 - Coordinated Optimization of Visual Cortical Maps (II) Numerical Studies A1 - Reichl, Lars A1 - Heide, Dominik A1 - Löwel, Siegrid A1 - Crowley, Justin C. A1 - Kaschube, Matthias A1 - Wolf, Fred Y1 - 2012/11/08 N2 - Author Summary Neurons in the visual cortex of carnivores, primates and their close relatives form spatial representations or maps of multiple stimulus features. In part (I) of this study we theoretically predicted maps that are optima of a variety of optimization principles. When analyzing the joint optimization of two interacting maps we showed that for different optimization principles the resulting optima show a stereotyped, spatially perfectly periodic layout. Experimental maps, however, are much more irregular. In particular, in case of orientation columns it was found that different species show apparently species invariant statistics of point defects, so-called pinwheels. In this paper, we numerically investigate whether the spatial features of the stereotyped optima described in part (I) are expressed on biologically relevant timescales and whether other, spatially irregular, long-living states emerge that better reproduce the experimentally observed statistical properties of orientation maps. Moreover, we explore whether the coordinated optimization of more than two maps can lead to spatially irregular optima. JF - PLOS Computational Biology JA - PLOS Computational Biology VL - 8 IS - 11 UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002756 SP - e1002756 EP - PB - Public Library of Science M3 - doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002756 ER -