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Dynamics of the orientation-tuned membrane potential response in cat primary visual cortex

Nature Neuroscience volume 4, pages 1014–1019 (2001)Cite this article

Abstract

Neurons in the primary visual cortex are highly selective for stimulus orientation, whereas their thalamic inputs are not. Much controversy has been focused on the mechanism by which cortical orientation selectivity arises. Although an increasing amount of evidence supports a linear model in which orientation selectivity is conferred upon visual cortical cells by the alignment of the receptive fields of their thalamic inputs, the controversy has recently been rekindled with the suggestion that late cortical input—delayed by multiple synapses—could lead to sharpening of orientation selectivity over time. Here we used intracellular recordings in vivo to examine temporal properties of the orientation-selective response to flashed gratings. Bayesian parameter estimation demonstrated that both preferred orientation and tuning width were stable throughout the response to a single stimulus.

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Figure 1: Representative membrane potential responses to single grating presentations.
Figure 2: Temporal analysis of the response of the cell shown in Fig. 1.
Figure 3: Parameter analysis for three additional example cells.
Figure 4: Summary changes in preferred orientation, tuning width and offset.
Figure 5: Time course of response to preferred and nearby orientations.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank S. Solla, D. Goldreich and M. Kvale for helpful discussions, and S. Solla, K. Miller, M. Stryker and D. Sharon for comments on the manuscript. This work was supported by US National Institutes of Health grant RO1EYO4726 and the Human Frontiers Science Program.

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  1. Northwestern University Institute for Neuroscience and Department of Neurobiology and Physiology, Northwestern University, 2153 North Campus Drive, Evanston, 60208, Illinois, USA

    Deda C. Gillespie, Ilan Lampl, Jeffrey S. Anderson & David Ferster

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  1. Deda C. Gillespie
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Correspondence to Deda C. Gillespie.

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Gillespie, D., Lampl, I., Anderson, J. et al. Dynamics of the orientation-tuned membrane potential response in cat primary visual cortex. Nat Neurosci 4, 1014–1019 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn731

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