title: Direction-Selective Circuits Shape Noise to Ensure a Precise Population Code.
abstract: Neural responses are noisy, and circuit structure can correlate this noise across neurons. Theoretical studies show that noise correlations can have diverse effects on population coding, but these studies rarely explore stimulus dependence of noise correlations. Here, we show that noise correlations in responses of ON-OFF direction-selective retinal ganglion cells are strongly stimulus dependent, and we uncover the circuit mechanisms producing this stimulus dependence. A population model based on these mechanistic studies shows that stimulus-dependent noise correlations improve the encoding of motion direction 2-fold compared to independent noise. This work demonstrates a mechanism by which a neural circuit effectively shapes its signal and noise in concert, minimizing corruption of signal by noise. Finally, we generalize our findings beyond direction coding in the retina and show that stimulus-dependent correlations will generally enhance information coding in populations of diversely tuned neurons.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.
authors.forename: Joel
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zylberberg
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.|Department of Neurobiology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708, USA.
authors.forename: Jon
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cafaro
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.
authors.forename: Maxwell H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Turner
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.|Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Shea-Brown
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.|Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.
authors.forename: Fred
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Rieke
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D008822:Mice, Transgenic; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D012165:Retinal Ganglion Cells / Q000502:physiology*; D013569:Synapses / Q000502:physiology*