TY - JOUR
T1 - Orientation-selective responses in the mouse lateral geniculate nucleus
AU - Zhao, Xinyu
AU - Chen, Hui
AU - Liu, Xiaorong
AU - Cang, Jianhua
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - The dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN) receives visual information from the retina and transmits it to the cortex. In this study, we made extracellular recordings in the dLGN of both anesthetized and awake mice, and found that a surprisingly high proportion of cells were selective for stimulus orientation. The orientation selectivity of dLGN cells was unchanged after silencing the visual cortex pharmacologically, indicating that it is not due to cortical feedback. The orientation tuning of some dLGN cells correlated with their elongated receptive fields, while in others orientation selectivity was observed despite the fact that their receptive fields were circular, suggesting that their retinal input might already be orientation selective. Consistently, we revealed orientation/axis-selective ganglion cells in the mouse retina using multielectrode arrays in an in vitro preparation. Furthermore, the orientation tuning of dLGN cells was largely maintained at different stimulus contrasts, which could be sufficiently explained by a simple linear feedforward model. We also compared the degree of orientation selectivity in different visual structures under the same recording condition. Compared with the dLGN, orientation selectivity is greatly improved in the visual cortex, but is similar in the superior colliculus, another major retinal target. Together, our results demonstrate prominent orientation selectivity in the mouse dLGN, which may potentially contribute to visual processing in the cortex.
AB - The dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN) receives visual information from the retina and transmits it to the cortex. In this study, we made extracellular recordings in the dLGN of both anesthetized and awake mice, and found that a surprisingly high proportion of cells were selective for stimulus orientation. The orientation selectivity of dLGN cells was unchanged after silencing the visual cortex pharmacologically, indicating that it is not due to cortical feedback. The orientation tuning of some dLGN cells correlated with their elongated receptive fields, while in others orientation selectivity was observed despite the fact that their receptive fields were circular, suggesting that their retinal input might already be orientation selective. Consistently, we revealed orientation/axis-selective ganglion cells in the mouse retina using multielectrode arrays in an in vitro preparation. Furthermore, the orientation tuning of dLGN cells was largely maintained at different stimulus contrasts, which could be sufficiently explained by a simple linear feedforward model. We also compared the degree of orientation selectivity in different visual structures under the same recording condition. Compared with the dLGN, orientation selectivity is greatly improved in the visual cortex, but is similar in the superior colliculus, another major retinal target. Together, our results demonstrate prominent orientation selectivity in the mouse dLGN, which may potentially contribute to visual processing in the cortex.
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U2 - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0095-13.2013
DO - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0095-13.2013
M3 - Article
C2 - 23904611
AN - SCOPUS:84880784220
VL - 33
SP - 12751
EP - 12763
JO - Journal of Neuroscience
JF - Journal of Neuroscience
SN - 0270-6474
IS - 31
ER -