Receptive Field

The receptive field of a sensory neuron is a region of space in which the presence of a stimulus will alter the firing of that neuron. The space can be on an animal's body, such as in classic, cutaneous receptive fields (an area of the animal's skin), in the space surrounding an animal, such as an area of auditory space that is fixed in a reference system based on the ears but that moves with the animal as it moves, or in a fixed location in space that is largely independent of the animal's location (Place cells). 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 (1906) to describe the area of skin from which a scratch reflex could be elicited in a dog. According to Alonso and Chen (2008) it was Hartline (1938) who applied the terms to single neurons, in this case from the retina of a frog.

The concept of receptive fields can be extended further up to the neural 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.