Two basic types of sensors

[Falco]

During the research meeting on dec 9th 2019, @jhawkins talked about two types of sensors:

@Excerpt at 17:49

If we think about our sensors, there are two basic types of sensors on our skin or our retinas. There are the ones that represent spacial patterns and there are the ones that are direction sensitive. (…) And those are in separate channels that go to the cortex.

@subutai confirmed this a bit later.

Does anyone know of a neuroscience paper that discusses these two types? I tried googling for info on this, but I didn’t get far. I don’t really know how to call them or how to descibe this.