title: Dynamic functional connectivity among neuronal population during modulation of extra-classical receptive field in primary visual cortex.
abstract: The neuronal activity evoked by stimuli confined in a receptive field can be modulated by surround stimuli of the extra-classical receptive field (eCRF). The surrounding modulation, hypothesized to be the basis of visual feature integration and figure-ground segregation, has drawn much attention in the field of neuroscience and engineering. However, most studies focused on surround modulation of individual neuronal response. In this study, we analyzed surround modulation of the population response recorded from rat primary visual cortex, and further investigated dynamic functional connectivity modulated by the surrounding stimuli. The functional connectivity was estimated using Granger causality (GC) and then determined by thresholding the p-matrix with different significance α values. Four scalar indexes were calculated to describe the functional connectivity of neuronal population: averaged connection strength (mGC), connection density (D), clustering coefficient (C) and path length (L). The statistical results from 5 rats showed that these network characteristics were dynamically changed during modulation of surrounding stimuli, which suggested that the neuronal population may connect in a dynamic way during modulation of eCRF. We further guessed that the neurons may happened to be organized in a more efficient way underlying surrounding modulation conditions, which helps to process larger images efficiently with the same number of neurons. This study provided new insights for a better understanding of the underlying neural mechanisms responsible for surround modulation.
authors.affiliation: School of Electrical Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China.
authors.forename: Xiaoke
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Niu
authors.affiliation: School of Electrical Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China; Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100000, China. Electronic address: shili@zzu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: School of Electrical Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China. Electronic address: wanhong@zzu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wan
authors.affiliation: School of Electrical Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China.
authors.forename: Zhizhong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: School of Electrical Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China.
authors.forename: Zhigang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Shang
authors.affiliation: School of Electrical Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China.
authors.forename: Zhihui
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004567:Electrodes, Implanted; D065818:Gamma Rhythm / Q000502:physiology; D008959:Models, Neurological; D015233:Models, Statistical; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D020318:Rats, Long-Evans; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Extra-classical receptive field; Functional connectivity; Granger causality; Primary visual cortex; Surround modulation