This predicted dendrodendritic interactions in the olfactory bulb, subsequently confirmed by electronmicroscopy, hypothesized to mediate lateral inhibition of the sensory input.
The first possible advantage is that orientation selectivity may be intensified with lateral inhibition from neighboring cells of a slightly different preferred orientation.
To maintain neural progenitor cells a regulatory loop takes place between neighboring cells, that involves the lateral inhibition process (see lateral inhibition).
In this way the recognition field exhibits lateral inhibition, allowing each neuron in it to represent a category to which input vectors are classified.