Mouse dLGN Receives Input from a Diverse Population of Retinal Ganglion Cells with Limited Functional Convergence

Robust effects of corticothalamic feedback and behavioral state on movie responses in mouse dLGN

“…Otherwise, units were classified as non-SbC. SbC units seem to constitute a sizeable fraction in our dataset, which is similar to our previous results [68], where SbC was also found to be among the overrepresented retinal ganglion cell (RGC) types providing input to dLGN.…”

“…In the visual system of primates and carnivores, CT feedback circuits seem to be organized into distinct streams [91–93] whose functional organization mimics that of the feedforward streams. Whether the known subtypes in mice can convey independent, stream-specific information is currently unknown, partly because already at the level of feedforward processing, the notion of streams in mouse dLGN is a matter of ongoing debate [94, 94–97], and response properties are diverse [67, 68, 98]. Our own assessment of CT feedback effects revealed few systematic differences for various dLGN cell-type classifications.…”

“…( i ) The strength of CT feedback effects on reliability is unrelated to the strength of feedback effects on eye position (LMM: slope 0.83 ± 1.27). The results from (h) and (i) are inconsistent with the hypothesis that CT feedback effects on trial-to-trial reliability can be explained by changes in eye position variance.

Figure 1-Supplement 3 Feedback effects during movie presentation are largely independent of functional cell type classification.The dLGN is a non-homogeneous nucleus, consisting of different neuronal cell types [67, 68]. To test if the effect of CT feedback depended on functional cell type, we performed functional cell typing of neurons in various ways.

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Spiking activity in the visual thalamus is coupled to pupil dynamics across temporal scales

“…Other authors have observed a diversity in arousal-related modulations both between (Shimaoka et al, 2018; Williamson et al, 2015) and within (Aydin et al, 2018; Liang et al, 2020; Molnár et al, 2021; Schröder et al, 2020) sensory systems. Therefore future work will need to establish if other thalamic nuclei, or neuronal sub-types within the dLGN (Kerschensteiner & Guido, 2017; Piscopo et al, 2013; Rosón et al, 2019), are similarly modulated by pupil size dynamics. Finally, although the pupil size signal is often lauded as an index for internal modulations that occur in the absence of other overt behaviors, considering pupil size in the context of other behaviors such as locomotion (Reimer et al, 2014; Vinck et al, 2015) or eye movements (Schwartz et al, 2020) promises to reveal a more diverse coupling to neural measures.…”

Pupil Size Dynamics Predict dLGN Firing Mode Over a Wide Range of Timescales

“…Other authors have observed a diversity in arousal-related modulations both between (Shimaoka et al, 2018;Williamson et al, 2015) and within (Aydın et al, 2018;Liang et al, 2020;Molnár et al, 2021;Schröder et al, 2020) sensory systems. Therefore future work will need to establish if other thalamic nuclei, or neuronal sub-types within the dLGN (Kerschensteiner & Guido, 2017;Piscopo et al, 2013;Rosón et al, 2019), are similarly modulated by pupil size dynamics. Finally, although the pupil size signal is often lauded as an index for internal modulations that occur in the absence of other overt behaviors, considering pupil size in the context of other behaviors such as locomotion (Reimer et al, 2014;Vinck et al, 2015) or eye movements (Schwartz et al, 2020) promises to reveal a more diverse coupling to neural measures.…”