title: Population code in mouse V1 facilitates readout of natural scenes through increased sparseness.
abstract: Neural codes are believed to have adapted to the statistical properties of the natural environment. However, the principles that govern the organization of ensemble activity in the visual cortex during natural visual input are unknown. We recorded populations of up to 500 neurons in the mouse primary visual cortex and characterized the structure of their activity, comparing responses to natural movies with those to control stimuli. We found that higher order correlations in natural scenes induced a sparser code, in which information is encoded by reliable activation of a smaller set of neurons and can be read out more easily. This computationally advantageous encoding for natural scenes was state-dependent and apparent only in anesthetized and active awake animals, but not during quiet wakefulness. Our results argue for a functional benefit of sparsification that could be a general principle governing the structure of the population activity throughout cortical microcircuits.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA.
authors.forename: Emmanouil
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Froudarakis
authors.affiliation: 1] Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA. [2] Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Tübingen, Germany. [3] Werner-Reichardt-Center for Integrative Neuroscience and Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Philipp
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Berens
authors.affiliation: 1] Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA. [2] Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Tübingen, Germany. [3] Werner-Reichardt-Center for Integrative Neuroscience and Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Tübingen, Germany. [4] Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Alexander S
authors.identifier: 0000000323925105
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Ecker
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA.
authors.forename: R James
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Cotton
authors.affiliation: 1] Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Tübingen, Germany. [2] Institute for Neurobiology, Department for Neuroethology, University of Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Fabian H
authors.initials: FH
authors.lastname: Sinz
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA.
authors.forename: Dimitri
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Yatsenko
authors.affiliation: 1] Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA. [2] Department of Bioengineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Saggau
authors.affiliation: 1] Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Tübingen, Germany. [2] Werner-Reichardt-Center for Integrative Neuroscience and Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Tübingen, Germany. [3] Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bethge
authors.affiliation: 1] Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA. [2] Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Tübingen, Germany. [3] Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics, Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA.
authors.forename: Andreas S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Tolias
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000166:cytology* / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014851:Wakefulness / Q000502:physiology
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