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.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 851-857 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Nature neuroscience |
Volume | 17 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 2014 |
Externally published | Yes |
Funding
We thank W.J. Ma for discussions, P. Storer for help setting up the two-photon system, D. Murray, A. Laudano and A.M. Morgan for organizational help and V. Kalatsky for help with the intrinsic-imaging system. This work was supported by US National Institutes of Health grants NIH-Pioneer award DP1-OD008301, NEI DP1-EY023176 and NIDA RO1-DA028525 to A.S.T.; a McKnight Scholar Award and Beckman Foundation Young Investigator Award to A.S.T.; NEI P30-EY002520; the German National Academic Foundation (P.B.); the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience (FKZ 01GQ1002); and the German Excellency Initiative through the Centre for Integrative Neuroscience Tübingen (EXC307).
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Neuroscience