title: Dynamic modification of cortical orientation tuning mediated by recurrent connections.
abstract: Receptive field properties of visual cortical neurons depend on the spatiotemporal context within which the stimuli are presented. We have examined the temporal context dependence of cortical orientation tuning using dynamic visual stimuli with rapidly changing orientations. We found that tuning to the orientation of the test stimulus depended on a briefly presented preceding stimulus, with the preferred orientation shifting away from the preceding orientation. Analyses of the spatial-phase dependence of the shift showed that the effect cannot be explained by purely feedforward mechanisms, but can be accounted for by activity-dependent changes in the recurrent interactions between different orientation columns. Thus, short-term plasticity of the intracortical circuit can mediate dynamic modification of orientation tuning, which may be important for efficient visual coding.
authors.affiliation: Division of Neurobiology, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Gidon
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Felsen
authors.forename: Yao-song
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.forename: Haishan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.forename: Gareth
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Spor
authors.forename: Chaoyi
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Dan
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002415:Cats; D004594:Electrophysiology; D008433:Mathematics; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009474:Neurons / Q000378:metabolism*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D013788:Thalamus / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism; D013997:Time Factors; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology*; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology