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- Title
Diverse Visual Features Encoded in Mouse Lateral Geniculate Nucleus.
- Authors
Piscopo, Denise M.; El-Danaf, Rana N.; Huberman, Andrew D.; Niell, Cristopher M.
- Abstract
The thalamus is crucial in determining the sensory information conveyed to cortex. In the visual system, the thalamic lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) is generally thought to encode simple center-surround receptive fields, which are combined into more sophisticated features in cortex, such as orientation and direction selectivity. However, recent evidence suggests that a more diverse set of retinal ganglion cells projects to the LGN. We therefore used multisite extracellular recordings to define the repertoire of visual features represented in the LGN of mouse, an emerging model for visual processing. In addition to center-surround cells, we discovered a substantial population with more selective coding properties, including direction and orientation selectivity, as well as neurons that signal absence of contrast in a visual scene. The direction and orientation selective neurons were enriched in regions that match the termination zones of direction selective ganglion cells from the retina, suggesting a source for their tuning. Together, these data demon-strate that the mouse LGN contains a far more elaborate representation of the visual scene than current models posit. These findings should therefore have a significant impact on our understanding of the computations performed in mouse visual cortex.
- Subjects
VISUAL cortex; LABORATORY mice; GENICULATE bodies; CELL nuclei; RETINAL ganglion cells; NEURONS
- Publication
Journal of Neuroscience, 2013, Vol 33, Issue 11, p4642
- ISSN
0270-6474
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5187-12.2013