Mixing of Chromatic and Luminance Retinal Signals in Primate Area V1.
Vision emerges from activation of chromatic and achromatic retinal channels whose interaction in visual cortex is still poorly understood. To investigate this interaction, we recorded neuronal activity from retinal ganglion cells and V1 cortical cells in macaques and measured their visual responses to grating stimuli that had either luminance contrast (luminance grating), chromatic contrast (chromatic grating), or a combination of the two (compound grating). As with parvocellular or koniocellular retinal ganglion cells, some V1 cells responded mostly to the chromatic contrast of the compound grating. As with magnocellular retinal ganglion cells, other V1 cells responded mostly to the luminance contrast and generated a frequency-doubled response to equiluminant chromatic gratings. Unlike magnocellular and parvocellular retinal ganglion cells, V1 cells formed a unimodal distribution for luminance/color preference with a 2- to 4-fold bias toward luminance. V1 cells associated with positive local field potentials in deep layers showed the strongest combined responses to color and luminance and, as a population, V1 cells encoded a diverse combination of luminance/color edges that matched edge distributions of natural scenes. Taken together, these results suggest that the primary visual cortex combines magnocellular and parvocellular retinal inputs to increase cortical receptive field diversity and to optimize visual processing of our natural environment.
Department of Biological Sciences, SUNY Optometry, New York, NY 10036, USA.
Xiaobing
X
Li
School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
Yao
Y
Chen
Department of Biological Sciences, SUNY Optometry, New York, NY 10036, USA Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Electrical Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Narmak, Tehran, Iran.
Reza
R
Lashgari
Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269, USA.
Yulia
Y
Bereshpolova
Department of Biological Sciences, SUNY Optometry, New York, NY 10036, USA Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269, USA.
Harvey A
HA
Swadlow
Department of Biological Sciences, SUNY Optometry, New York, NY 10036, USA Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
Barry B
BB
Lee
Department of Biological Sciences, SUNY Optometry, New York, NY 10036, USA Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269, USA.
Jose Manuel
JM
Alonso
D000200:Action Potentials; D000818:Animals; D004567:Electrodes, Implanted; D008252:Macaca fascicularis; D008253:Macaca mulatta; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D012165:Retinal Ganglion Cells / Q000502:physiology*; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*
koniocellular; magnocellular; parvocellular; receptive field; striate cortex