QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

HOME  |   SEARCH  |   ARCHIVE  |   SUBSCRIBE  |   CONTACT  |   HELP

The Journal of Neuroscience, September 9, 2009, 29(36):11409-11416; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1268-09.2009

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Submit an eLetter Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Google Scholar Articles by Tan, Z. Articles by Yao, H. PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Tan, Z. Articles by Yao, H.

 Previous Article

Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
The Spatiotemporal Frequency Tuning of LGN Receptive Field Facilitates Neural Discrimination of Natural Stimuli

Zhongchao Tan and Haishan Yao

Institute of Neuroscience, State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China

Correspondence should be addressed to Haishan Yao at the above address. Email: haishanyao{at}ion.ac.cn

The efficient coding hypothesis suggests that the early visual system is optimized to represent stimuli in the natural environment. While it is believed that LGN processing removes the redundant information of natural scenes, it is not clear whether the early visual processing can selectively amplify important signals in natural stimuli to facilitate discrimination. In this study, we examined the functional role of LGN spatiotemporal frequency tuning in the processing of natural scenes. First, we characterized the relationship between spatial and temporal frequency tuning for LGN receptive fields. We found that LGN neurons exhibit inseparable spatiotemporal frequency tuning in a manner consistent with the feature of optimal filters that can maximize information transmission of natural scenes. Second, we analyzed the spatiotemporal power spectrum of natural scenes and found that some frequencies exhibit larger variation in power across different scenes. Interestingly, the preferred frequency of ensemble LGN neurons matches the range of frequencies in which natural power spectrum varies most. Comparison of neural discrimination for natural stimuli and for artificial stimuli with similar mean power spectra but different variation structure showed that the match between LGN tuning and natural spectra variation enhances neural discrimination for natural stimuli. Our results indicate that, in addition to removing redundancy, the spatiotemporal frequency characteristics of LGN neurons can facilitate neural discrimination of natural stimuli.

---

Received March 15, 2009; revised July 19, 2009; accepted Aug. 7, 2009.

Correspondence should be addressed to Haishan Yao at the above address. Email: haishanyao{at}ion.ac.cn

Home  |   Search  |   Archive  |   Subscribe  |   Contact  |   Help