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Recent experimental studies show cortical circuit responses to external stimuli display varied dynamical properties. These include stimulus strength-dependent population response patterns, a shift from synchronous to asynchronous states and a decline in neural variability. To elucidate the mechanisms underlying these response properties and explore how they are mechanistically related, we develop a neural circuit model that incorporates two essential features widely observed in the cerebral cortex. The first feature is a balance between excitatory and inhibitory inputs to individual neurons; the second feature is distance-dependent connectivity. We show that applying a weak external stimulus to the model evokes a wave pattern propagating along lateral connections, but a strong external stimulus triggers a localized pattern; these stimulus strength-dependent population response patterns are quantitatively …