>>10924350>>10924636It's not really related to that. The data is recorded from the LGN, so what you're seeing is (as
>>10924818 said) more like the input you're getting from the retina. So rather than how things are represented/visualised by the cat, what this really gives us is the information/signal which is available to other cortical areas to process. In fact they're only looking at the responses from 1 particular type of RGC (that is, one particular type of feature extractor in the retina, which sends signals over the optic nerve).
Pic related is a simple example of responses to features, supposing that the feature the type of cell is looking for is "horizontal lines" and ignoring all the randomness, nonlinearity and temporal responses of real cells.
So all in all, the images in the OP are a good guess at the original visual scene, based on the collective responses of a set of neurons all "looking for" the same feature at different locations on the retina.
