Citation

Stanley GB, Jin J, Wang Y, Desbordes G, Wang Q, Black MJ, Alonso JM. J. Neurosci. 2012; 32(26): 9073-9088.

Affiliation

Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology & Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, Department of Biological Sciences, State University of New York, College of Optometry, New York, New York 10036, and Perceiving Systems Department, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Society for Neuroscience)

DOI

10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4968-11.2012

PMID

22745507

Abstract

Thalamic neurons respond to visual scenes by generating synchronous spike trains on the timescale of 10-20 ms that are very effective at driving cortical targets. Here we demonstrate that this synchronous activity contains unexpectedly rich information about fundamental properties of visual stimuli. We report that the occurrence of synchronous firing of cat thalamic cells with highly overlapping receptive fields is strongly sensitive to the orientation and the direction of motion of the visual stimulus. We show that this stimulus selectivity is robust, remaining relatively unchanged under different contrasts and temporal frequencies (stimulus velocities). A computational analysis based on an integrate-and-fire model of the direct thalamic input to a layer 4 cortical cell reveals a strong correlation between the degree of thalamic synchrony and the nonlinear relationship between cortical membrane potential and the resultant firing rate. Together, these findings suggest a novel population code in the synchronous firing of neurons in the early visual pathway that could serve as the substrate for establishing cortical representations of the visual scene.

Language: en