title: Supranormal orientation selectivity of visual neurons in orientation-restricted animals.
abstract: Altered sensory experience in early life often leads to remarkable adaptations so that humans and animals can make the best use of the available information in a particular environment. By restricting visual input to a limited range of orientations in young animals, this investigation shows that stimulus selectivity, e.g., the sharpness of tuning of single neurons in the primary visual cortex, is modified to match a particular environment. Specifically, neurons tuned to an experienced orientation in orientation-restricted animals show sharper orientation tuning than neurons in normal animals, whereas the opposite was true for neurons tuned to non-experienced orientations. This sharpened tuning appears to be due to elongated receptive fields. Our results demonstrate that restricted sensory experiences can sculpt the supranormal functions of single neurons tailored for a particular environment. The above findings, in addition to the minimal population response to orientations close to the experienced one, agree with the predictions of a sparse coding hypothesis in which information is represented efficiently by a small number of activated neurons. This suggests that early brain areas adopt an efficient strategy for coding information even when animals are raised in a severely limited visual environment where sensory inputs have an unnatural statistical structure.
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.|Center for Information and Neural Networks (CiNet), National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
authors.forename: Kota S
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Sasaki
authors.affiliation: Universität Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Rui
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kimura
authors.affiliation: Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Inuyama, 484-8506, Japan.
authors.forename: Taihei
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ninomiya
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
authors.forename: Yuka
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Tabuchi
authors.affiliation: Kyoto Sangyo University, Kita-ku, Kyoto 603-8555, Japan.
authors.forename: Hiroki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tanaka
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
authors.forename: Masayuki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fukui
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
authors.forename: Yusuke C
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Asada
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
authors.forename: Toshiya
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Arai
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.|Center for Information and Neural Networks (CiNet), National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
authors.forename: Mikio
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Inagaki
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
authors.forename: Takayuki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nakazono
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
authors.forename: Mika
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Baba
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
authors.forename: Daisuke
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kato
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.|Center for Information and Neural Networks (CiNet), National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
authors.forename: Shinji
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nishimoto
authors.affiliation: National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Okazaki, Aichi 444-8585, Japan.
authors.forename: Takahisa M
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Sanada
authors.affiliation: RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan.|Graduate School of Medicine, Hirosaki University, Aomori 036-8562, Japan.
authors.forename: Toshiki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tani
authors.affiliation: RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan.|Department of Systems Life Engineering, Maebashi Institute of Technology, Gunma 371-0816, Japan.
authors.forename: Kazuyuki
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Imamura
authors.affiliation: RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan.|Brain Science Inspired Life Support Research Center, The University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo 182-8585, Japan.
authors.forename: Shigeru
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tanaka
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.|Center for Information and Neural Networks (CiNet), National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
authors.forename: Izumi
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Ohzawa
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002415:Cats; D055724:Electrophysiological Phenomena; D005135:Eye Protective Devices; D061848:Optical Imaging; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000502:physiology*