Any realistic model of the neuronal pathway from the retina to the visual cortex (V1) must account for the bursting behavior of neurons in the latreal geniculate nucleus (LGN). A robust but minimal model, the integrate-and-fire-or-bust (IFB) model, has recently been proposed for individual LGN neurons. Based on this, we derive a dynamic population model, the first simulation of its kind evolving in a two-dimensional phase space, is used to study the behavior of bursting populations in response to diverse stimulus conditions.