Development of orientation tuning in simple cells of primary visual cortex

Abstract

Moore BD 4th, Freeman RD. Development of orientation tuning in simple cells of primary visual cortex. J Neurophysiol 107: 2506-2516, 2012. First published February 8, 2012 doi:10.1152/jn.00719.2011.-Orientation selectivity and its development are basic features of visual cortex. The original model of orientation selectivity proposes that elongated simple cell receptive fields are constructed from convergent input of an array of lateral geniculate nucleus neurons. However, orientation selectivity of simple cells in the visual cortex is generally greater than the linear contributions based on projections from spatial receptive field profiles. This implies that additional selectivity may arise from intracortical mechanisms. The hierarchical processing idea implies mainly linear connections, whereas cortical contributions are generally considered to be nonlinear. We have explored development of orientation selectivity in visual cortex with a focus on linear and nonlinear factors in a population of anesthetized 4-wk postnatal kittens and adult cats. Linear contributions are estimated from receptive field maps by which orientation tuning curves are generated and bandwidth is quantified. Nonlinear components are estimated as the magnitude of the power function relationship between responses measured from drifting sinusoidal gratings and those predicted from the spatial receptive field. Measured bandwidths for kittens are slightly larger than those in adults, whereas predicted bandwidths are substantially broader. These results suggest that relatively strong nonlinearities in early postnatal stages are substantially involved in the development of orientation tuning in visual cortex. orientation selectivity; vision; nonlinearity THE TRANSFORMATION OF RECEPTIVE FIELDS (RFs) from centersurround organization in the early visual pathway to that of elongated edges in striate cortex is accompanied by the property of orientation selectivity of cortical neurons. Although orientation tuning is present at early postnatal stages, it narrows developmentally to a final adult level of selectivity (Bonds 1979; Freeman and Ohzawa 1992). Regarding the derivation of simple cell orientation selectivity, there is evidence supporting both feedforward and intracortical processing (see Ferster and Miller 2000 for a review). The classical model of orientation selectivity involves a hierarchical processing of information occurring from convergent arrays of feedforward lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) input onto simple cells in area 17 of the visual cortex (Hubel and Wiesel 1962). Tests of this model have included direct recordings from LGN afferents (Chapman et al. 1991) and simultaneous recordings from pairs of monosynaptically connected LGN and simple cells (Reid and Alonso 1995;Tanaka 1983). In other tests, intracellular recordings of simple cells have been made while primary visual cortex was presumably inactivated. Reported findings indicate that specificity of orientation tuning can be accounted for entirely by thalamic input (Chung and F...

Visual Orientation and Directional Selectivity through Thalamic Synchrony

“…As a measure of the sharpness of the orientation tuning, Figure 4 B shows the HWHH of the orientation tuning curve (see inset for definition), which is similar to that observed experimentally at the level of V1 (Ringach et al, 2002; Moore and Freeman, 2012). Examples of individual HWHH values are provided in Figures 2 and 3.…”

A framework for plasticity implementation on the SpiNNaker neural architecture

“…In Figure 8C we show the orientation tuning curves of each neuron, measured by rotating the stimulus bar counter-clockwise in 10°C steps. The results show that each neuron has successfully learned to respond best to one preferred orientation, which is in line with previous modeling studies and experimental and anatomical data (Moore and Freeman, 2012 ; Jeyabalaratnam et al, 2013 ). The learning can be observed in Movie 2 (Supplementary Material), where the four receptive fields are emerge from the repeated presentation of the input stimulation.…”

The Divisive-Normalization Model of V1 Neurons: A Comprehensive Comparison of Physiological Data and Model Predictions

“…The RF of a real simple cell is composed of excitatory and inhibitory sub-regions. This composition has been mapped using local stimulus probes such as a light spot (Hubel & Wiesel, 1959;Volgushev, Vidyasagar, & Pei, 1996), a light bar (Andrews & Pollen, 1979), light and dark bars (Movshon et al, 1978b;Tadmor & Tolhurst, 1989;Kulikowski & Bishop, 1981;Kulikowski & Vidyasagar, 1986;Glezer, Tsherbach, Gauselman, & Bondarko, 1982), and the reverse correlation method (Nishimoto, Ishida, & Ohzawa, 2006;Ringach, 2002;Moore IV & Freeman, 2012; see also Gardner, Anzai, Ohzawa, & Freeman, 1999b). The classical RF of the DNM simple cell was also mapped using these methods (Figures 21 and 22, Phenomena 28 and 29).…”