Linear and Nonlinear Contributions to the Visual Sensitivity of Neurons in Primate Lateral Geniculate Nucleus

Solomon, Samuel G.; Tailby, Chris; Cheong, Soon Keen; Camp, Aaron J.

doi:10.1152/jn.01118.2009

Cited by 34 publications

(35 citation statements)

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“…Procedures conformed to the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council code of practice for the use and care of animals and institutional animal care and ethics committees at the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney. Details of preparation are given elsewhere (23). Anesthesia and analgesia were maintained by i.v.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1H shows an example of a mixed P-/K-cell pair). For simplicity we restricted our analysis to cell pairs in which both members of the pair could be assigned unambiguously to the same functional (P, M, or K) pathway (23,25,26). To measure correlations in absence of patterned visual stimulus, 58 P pairs were drawn from a total of 48 P cells at 22 recording sites in 10 animals, 51 M pairs were drawn from 53 M cells (22 recording sites, nine animals), and 26 K pairs were drawn from 34 K cells (14 recording sites, five animals).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Note K response is variable but is not synchronized to P response. Insets in E-H show receptive field sizes and shapes reconstructed from spike-triggered average responses to flickering achromatic checkerboard stimuli (23,27). The largest contour for each cell shows the spatial extent of receptive field where sensitivity has fallen to 1/e that of the peak.…”

Section: During Extracellular Recordings Frommentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The largest contour for each cell shows the spatial extent of receptive field where sensitivity has fallen to 1/e that of the peak. Contours for the on/off K cell reflect imbalance of on-and off-subunits of the receptive field; contours for the other cells reflect linear contributions to the receptive field (23,27). Note that the reference grid lines do not indicate the sizes of checkerboard elements, which were adjusted to be optimal for each set of recorded cells.…”

Section: During Extracellular Recordings Frommentioning

confidence: 99%

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Slow intrinsic rhythm in the koniocellular visual pathway

Cheong

Tailby

Martin

et al. 2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Slow rhythmic changes in nerve-cell activity are characteristic of unconscious brain states and also may contribute to waking brain function by coordinating activity between cortical and subcortical structures. Here we show that slow rhythms are exhibited by the koniocellular (K) pathway, one of three visual pathways beginning in the eye and projecting through the lateral geniculate visual relay nucleus to the cerebral cortex. We recorded activity in pairs and ensembles of neurons in the lateral geniculate nucleus of anesthetized marmoset monkeys. We found slow rhythms are common in K cells but are rare in parvocellular and magnocellular cell pairs. The time course of slow K rhythms corresponds to subbeta (<10 Hz) EEG frequencies, and high spike rates in K cells are associated with low power in the theta and delta EEG bands. By contrast, spontaneous activity in the parvocellular and magnocellular pathways is neither synchronized nor strongly linked to EEG state. These observations suggest that parallel visual pathways not only carry different kinds of visual signals but also contribute differentially to brain circuits at the first synapse in the thalamus. Differential contribution of sensory streams to rhythmic brain circuits also raises the possibility that sensory stimuli can be tailored to modify brain rhythms.parallel pathways | visual system | sleep-wake cycles | anesthesia | epilepsy T he thalamus is central to brain networks that generate slow rhythmic neural activity in sleep-wake cycles, anesthesia, and epilepsy (1-5). However, the thalamus also provides parallel pathways to cerebral cortex for conscious sensation. These two aspects of thalamic function are not independent, as shown, for example, when repetitive visual stimuli induce epileptic seizures (6). Anatomical studies of the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) show preferential inputs to the LGN koniocellular (K) layers from midbrain centers regulating eye movements and vigilance state (1, 2, 7-9), suggesting that activity in the K system is concerned with brain state as well as with faithful transmission of retinal signals. We found evidence supporting this idea from an unexpected observation on K cells. Results During extracellular recordings fromLGN in anesthetized marmoset monkeys (Fig.1 A-D), we found that in the absence of patterned visual stimuli the spike rate of K cells showed slow fluctuations over the course of several seconds to minutes. An example of these slow intrinsic rhythms in three simultaneously recorded K cells is shown in Fig. 1E. By contrast the spike rate of parvocellular (P) cells (Fig. 1F) and magnocellular (M) cells (Fig. 1G) was stable in the absence of patterned visual stimulus. Retinal ganglion cell inputs to K, P, and M layers show low variation in steady discharges at frequencies below 3 Hz (10); this fact implies that the fluctuations do not arise in the retina. Frequency analysis of maintained spike rates showed that below 1 Hz, K-cell spike rates (n = 56) on average were 33% more variable than P-cell spike ...

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: During Extracellular Recordings Frommentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: During Extracellular Recordings Frommentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Slow intrinsic rhythm in the koniocellular visual pathway

Cheong

Tailby

Martin

et al. 2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

Self Cite

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show abstract

“…Because LGN neurons contain more nonlinearities in their responses than retinal ganglion cells do (e.g. Duong and Freeman, 2008;Solomon et al, 2010), they are more likely to emerge as more discriminating. It remains an intriguing question how much separation between retina and LGN one can measure using this method.…”

Section: The Lgn Is Not a Simple Relaymentioning

confidence: 99%

The multifunctional lateral geniculate nucleus

Weyand

2016

Reviews in the Neurosciences

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AbstractProviding the critical link between the retina and visual cortex, the well-studied lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) has stood out as a structure in search of a function exceeding the mundane ‘relay’. For many mammals, it is structurally impressive: Exquisite lamination, sophisticated microcircuits, and blending of multiple inputs suggest some fundamental transform. This impression is bolstered by the fact that numerically, the retina accounts for a small fraction of its input. Despite such promise, the extent to which an LGN neuron separates itself from its retinal brethren has proven difficult to appreciate. Here, I argue that whereas retinogeniculate coupling is strong, what occurs in the LGN is judicious pruning of a retinal drive by nonretinal inputs. These nonretinal inputs reshape a receptive field that under the right conditions departs significantly from its retinal drive, even if transiently. I first review design features of the LGN and follow with evidence for 10 putative functions. Only two of these tend to surface in textbooks: parsing retinal axons by eye and functional group and gating by state. Among the remaining putative functions, implementation of the principle of graceful degradation and temporal decorrelation are at least as interesting but much less promoted. The retina solves formidable problems imposed by physics to yield multiple efficient and sensitive representations of the world. The LGN applies context, increasing content, and gates several of these representations. Even if the basic concentric receptive field remains, information transmitted for each LGN spike relative to each retinal spike is measurably increased.

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Representation of the visual field in the primary visual area of the marmoset monkey: Magnification factors, point‐image size, and proportionality to retinal ganglion cell density

Chaplin

Rosa

2013

J of Comparative Neurology

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The primary visual area (V1) forms a systematic map of the visual field, in which adjacent cell clusters represent adjacent points of visual space. A precise quantification of this map is key to understanding the anatomical relationships between neurons located in different stations of the visual pathway, as well as the neural bases of visual performance in different regions of the visual field. We used computational methods to quantify the visual topography of V1 in the marmoset (Callithrix jacchus), a small diurnal monkey. The receptive fields of neurons throughout V1 were mapped in two anesthetized animals using electrophysiological recordings. Following histological reconstruction, precise 3D reconstructions of the V1 surface and recording sites were generated. We found that the areal magnification factor (M(A) ) decreases with eccentricity following a function that has the same slope as that observed in larger diurnal primates, including macaque, squirrel, and capuchin monkeys, and humans. However, there was no systematic relationship between M(A) and polar angle. Despite individual variation in the shape of V1, the relationship between M(A) and eccentricity was preserved across cases. Comparison between V1 and the retinal ganglion cell density demonstrated preferential magnification of central space in the cortex. The size of the cortical compartment activated by a punctiform stimulus decreased from the foveal representation towards the peripheral representation. Nonetheless, the relationship between the receptive field sizes of V1 cells and the density of ganglion cells suggested that each V1 cell receives information from a similar number of retinal neurons, throughout the visual field.

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Linear and Nonlinear Contributions to the Visual Sensitivity of Neurons in Primate Lateral Geniculate Nucleus

Cited by 34 publications

References 75 publications

Slow intrinsic rhythm in the koniocellular visual pathway

Slow intrinsic rhythm in the koniocellular visual pathway

The multifunctional lateral geniculate nucleus

Representation of the visual field in the primary visual area of the marmoset monkey: Magnification factors, point‐image size, and proportionality to retinal ganglion cell density

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