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- Title
Internal Gain Modulations, But Not Changes in Stimulus Contrast, Preserve the Neural Code.
- Authors
Jiyoung Park; Sangkyun Lee; Smirnakis, Stelios M.
- Abstract
Neurons in primary visual cortex are strongly modulated both by stimulus contrast and by fluctuations of internal inputs. An important question is whether the population code is preserved under these conditions. Changes in stimulus contrast are thought to leave the population code invariant, whereas the effect of internal gain modulations remains unknown. To address these questions we studied how the direction-of-motion of oriented gratings is encoded in layer 2/3 primary visual cortex of mouse (with C57BL/6 background, of either sex). We found that, because contrast gain responses across cells are heterogeneous, a change in contrast alters the information distribution profile across cells leading to a violation of contrast invariance. Remarkably, internal input fluctuations that cause commensurate firing rate modulations at the single-cell level result in more homogeneous gain responses, respecting population code invariance. These observations argue that the brain strives to maintain the stability of the neural code in the face of fluctuating internal inputs.
- Subjects
NEURAL codes; VISUAL cortex; NEURONS
- Publication
Journal of Neuroscience, 2019, Vol 39, Issue 9, p1671
- ISSN
0270-6474
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2012-18.2019