The Physiologist's Friend Simulator

PhysioFriend lets you plot receptive fields of simulated retinal and cortical cells, both for the luminance and color systems . It models a small patch of the retina and (for the luminance simulation) a part of a single cortical column. It is intended for classroom demonstration of cell response properties or for teaching yourself something about the responses of visual cells.

You can hear the cell responses as though you were doing a recording from a live animal. You can choose between photoreceptor, horizontal cell, on and off bipolar cells, on and off ganglion cells, and several types of cortical cells. You can use bar, edge, or grating stimuli . You will hear how the cell responds as you use your mouse to move the stimulus around the virtual tangent screen. The stimulus orientation, contrast, size, spatial frequency can be easily manipulated through the keyboard .

PhysioFriend is 100% written in Java .  You need a Java run time environment (at least version 1.4+) and a sound card--if you want to hear the cells. (If you don't have a sound card, you can still see the cells responses on an activity meter.)