Precisely correlated firing in cells of the lateral geniculate nucleus
| Autor: | R. C. Reid, Jose-Manuel Alonso, William Martin Usrey |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 1996 |
| Předmět: |
Neurons
Multidisciplinary Thalamus Action Potentials Geniculate Bodies Anatomy Biology Lateral geniculate nucleus Electrophysiology medicine.anatomical_structure Visual cortex nervous system Receptive field Neural Pathways Geniculate Cats medicine Animals Magnocellular cell Neuron Neuroscience Visual Cortex |
| Zdroj: | Nature. 383:815-819 |
| ISSN: | 1476-4687 0028-0836 |
| DOI: | 10.1038/383815a0 |
| Popis: | Simple cells within layer IV of the cat primary visual cortex are selective for lines of a specific orientation. It has been proposed that their receptive-field properties are established by the pattern of connections that they receive from the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) of the thalamus. Thalamic inputs, however, represent only a small proportion of the synapses made onto simple cells, and others have argued that corticocortical connections are likely to be important in shaping simple-cell response properties. Here we describe a mechanism that might be involved in selectively strengthening the effect of thalamic inputs. We show that neighbouring geniculate neurons with overlapping receptive fields of the same type (on-centre or off-centre) often fire spikes that are synchronized to within 1 millisecond. Moreover, these neurons often project to a common cortical target neuron where synchronous spikes are more effective in evoking a postsynaptic response. We propose that precisely correlated firing within a group of geniculate neurons could serve to reinforce the thalamic input to cortical simple cells. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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