Rapid Plasticity of Visual Responses in the Adult Lateral Geniculate Nucleus

Moore, Bartlett D.; Kiley, Caitlin Williams; Sun, Chao; Usrey, W. Martin

doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2011.06.025

Cited by 30 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(56 reference statements)

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“…The equality of transient responses to darkness and brightness is consistent with the observations of Creutzfeldt et al (18), who reported that stimuli of negative and positive contrasts elicited spike rate responses with similar response peaks, as well as similar response dynamics in "OFF" and "ON" macaque LGN cells, respectively (also see ref. 19). Our further analysis of the dark/bright asymmetry in the visually evoked LFP in layer 4C (Fig.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cortical brightness adaptation when darkness and brightness produce different dynamical states in the visual cortex

Xing

Yeh

Gordon

et al. 2014

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

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Darkness and brightness are very different perceptually. To understand the neural basis for the visual difference, we studied the dynamical states of populations of neurons in macaque primary visual cortex when a spatially uniform area (8°× 8°) of the visual field alternated between black and white. Darkness evoked sustained nerve-impulse spiking in primary visual cortex neurons, but bright stimuli evoked only a transient response. A peak in the local field potential (LFP) γ band (30-80 Hz) occurred during darkness; white-induced LFP fluctuations were of lower amplitude, peaking at 25 Hz. However, the sustained response to white in the evoked LFP was larger than for black. Together with the results on spiking, the LFP results imply that, throughout the stimulus period, bright fields evoked strong net sustained inhibition. Such cortical brightness adaptation can explain many perceptual phenomena: interocular speeding up of dark adaptation, tonic interocular suppression, and interocular masking.ight adaptation is a vitally important visual function for enabling a stable perception of the visual world when background luminance levels can be as different as night and day. Previous psychophysical studies suggested that light adaptation was caused mainly by gain control mechanisms in the retina (1-3) that have been well studied (4). However, some psychophysical results suggested that there might be also a cortical contribution to light adaptation (5), but the nature of the cortical contribution is much less well understood. Here, we report our studies of cortical adaptation to brightness and darkness in macaque primary visual cortex (V1) and the implications for visual perception.We asked the following question: how does macaque V1 cortex respond to large dark and bright regions like those that would comprise the background of a visual scene during the night or the day, respectively? The experiments reported here focused on two cortical layers, 4C and 2/3. The layers of V1 are distinct stages of processing of visual signals (6, 7). The input layer 4C is the first cortical stage where the cortex could distinguish between blackness and whiteness (8). Layer 2/3 comprise one of the main visual outputs of V1 to extrastriate visual cortex (9). To obtain a comprehensive view of the response to black and white in cortical layers 4C and 2/3, we used measurements of population activity: multiunit spike rate, termed multiunit activity (MUA), and local field potential (LFP) (10-12).Cortical brightness adaptation was evident in the qualitatively different dynamics of neural population activity in layers 4C and 2/3 when the monkeys viewed black and white regions. Both black and white large-area stimuli evoked transient excitatory responses in MUA, but in response to a white region, there was a slowly developing but much stronger inhibition of spike activity. Such suppression of sustained spiking in cortical neurons by white backgrounds would increase the signal/noise ratio of targets on white backgrounds. Such cortical brightness a...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The stimulus consisted of a sequence of alternating black and white squares (19) ) with the background were nearly equal. Each black or white square appeared for 500 ms, and the entire sequence lasted ∼4 or ∼8 s.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cortical brightness adaptation when darkness and brightness produce different dynamical states in the visual cortex

Xing

Yeh

Gordon

et al. 2014

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

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“…Finally, small inputs may support adult plasticity of RG connectivity through changes in synaptic weight (Litvina and Chen, 2017 ). Indeed, cat and primate TC neurons exhibit rapid plasticity in receptive field properties in response to acute perturbation of RGC or cortical input activity, as well as changes in brain state (Aguila et al, 2017; Hei et al, 2014; Moore et al, 2011). Thus the convergence of RGC inputs with varying strengths may enable plasticity of visual information transfer, which could eventually serve as a tool for correcting circuit defects secondary to development or disease.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Functional Convergence at the Retinogeniculate Synapse

Litvina

Chen

2017

Neuron

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Summary Precise connectivity between retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) and thalamocortical (TC) relay neurons is thought to be essential for the transmission of visual information. Consistent with this view, electrophysiological measurements have previously estimated that 1–3 retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) converge onto a mouse geniculate TC neuron. Recent advances in connectomics and rabies tracing have yielded much higher estimates of retinogeniculate convergence, although not all identified contacts may be functional. Here we use optogenetics and a computational simulation to determine the number of functionally relevant retinogeniculate inputs onto TC neurons in mice. We find an average of 10 RGCs converging onto a mature TC neuron, in contrast to >30 inputs before developmental refinement. However, only 30% of retinogeniculate inputs exceed the threshold for dominating postsynaptic activity. These results signify a greater role for the thalamus in visual processing and provide a functional perspective of anatomical connectivity data.

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“…This kind of research is usually carried out with animals during their early postnatal life, and the plasticity has been well characterized [38,39]. A recent breakthrough in this area is the identification of a robust form of plasticity in the LGN of adult cats [40]. This study used intraocular injections of the glutamate receptor agonist to block visual responses in oncenter retinal ganglion cells and found that the inactivation led to a rapid emergence of off-center responses from on-center neurons in the LGN.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceptual Learning of Contrast Detection in the Human Lateral Geniculate Nucleus

Zhang

Qiu

et al. 2016

Current Biology

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The brain is continuously modified by perceptual experience throughout life. Perceptual learning, which refers to the long-term performance improvement resulting from practice, has been widely used as a paradigm to study experience-dependent brain plasticity in adults [1, 2]. In the visual system, adult plasticity is largely believed to be restricted to the cortex, with subcortical structures losing their capacity for change after a critical period of development [3, 4]. Although various cortical mechanisms have been shown to mediate visual perceptual learning [5-12], there has been no reported investigation of perceptual learning in subcortical nuclei. Here, human subjects were trained on a contrast detection task for 30 days, leading to a significant contrast sensitivity improvement that was specific to the trained eye and the trained visual hemifield. Training also resulted in an eye- and hemifield-specific fMRI signal increase to low-contrast patterns in the magnocellular layers of the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), even when subjects did not pay attention to the patterns. Such an increase was absent in the parvocellular layers of the LGN and visual cortical areas. Furthermore, the behavioral benefit significantly correlated with the neural enhancement. These findings suggest that LGN signals can be amplified by training to detect faint patterns. Neural plasticity induced by perceptual learning in human adults might not be confined to the cortical level but might occur as early as at the thalamic level.

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Rapid Plasticity of Visual Responses in the Adult Lateral Geniculate Nucleus

Cited by 30 publications

References 36 publications

Cortical brightness adaptation when darkness and brightness produce different dynamical states in the visual cortex

Cortical brightness adaptation when darkness and brightness produce different dynamical states in the visual cortex

Functional Convergence at the Retinogeniculate Synapse

Perceptual Learning of Contrast Detection in the Human Lateral Geniculate Nucleus

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