Figure 4

Neuronal firing in first-order thalamic nuclei after uni- and bimodal stimulation. (a) (i) Rasterplot depicting the firing of single cells for each trial after unimodal tactile (orange, top) and bimodal visual-tactile (blue, bottom) stimulation. (ii) Bar diagram displaying the firing probability after unimodal tactile (orange) and bimodal visual-tactile (blue) stimulation of single neurons that enhance their firing after stimulation. (iii) Bar diagram displaying the firing variability measured by the Fano factor of single neurons that enhance their firing after stimulation. (b) Same as (a) for dLGN. (c) (i) Rasterplot depicting the firing of single cells in VPM (12 out of 126) that showed a firing enhancement after unimodal visual stimulation (marked by dotted line and black arrow) (top) and line plot displaying the corresponding firing probability (bottom). Inset displays the firing response of the strongly responding neuron marked by black arrow above. Grey line corresponds to the firing probability after exclusion of the strong visual responsive neuron. (ii) Same as (i) for neurons in VPM that showed a depression of firing probability after visual stimulation (38 out of 126). (d) (i) Bar diagram displaying the MRV of VPM-S1 spike-LFP locking strength 0–80 ms after visual (red), tactile (orange) and bimodal visual-tactile (blue) stimulation. (ii) Polar plot displaying the coupling of spikes of VPM neurons to the phase of 1–4 Hz network oscillations in S1. (iii) Bar diagram displaying the fraction of significantly phase-locked neurons. White numbers indicate the total number of significantly phase-locked neurons after stimulation. (e) Same as (f) for dLGN spikes phase locked to 1–4 Hz oscillations in granular layers of V1. (*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001; one sample t-test, z-test for two proportions).