RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Brain State Effects on Layer 4 of the Awake Visual Cortex
JF The Journal of Neuroscience
JO J. Neurosci.
FD Society for Neuroscience
SP 3888
OP 3900
DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4969-13.2014
VO 34
IS 11
A1 Zhuang, Jun (庄骏)
A1 Yulia Bereshpolova
A1 Carl R. Stoelzel
A1 Joseph M. Huff
A1 Hei, Xiaojuan (黑晓娟)
A1 Jose-Manuel Alonso
A1 Harvey A. Swadlow
YR 2014
UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/34/11/3888.abstract
AB Awake mammals can switch between alert and nonalert brain states hundreds of times per day. Here, we study the effects of alertness on two cell classes in layer 4 of primary visual cortex of awake rabbits: presumptive excitatory “simple” cells and presumptive fast-spike inhibitory neurons (suspected inhibitory interneurons). We show that in both cell classes, alertness increases the strength and greatly enhances the reliability of visual responses. In simple cells, alertness also increases the temporal frequency bandwidth, but preserves contrast sensitivity, orientation tuning, and selectivity for direction and spatial frequency. Finally, alertness selectively suppresses the simple cell responses to high-contrast stimuli and stimuli moving orthogonal to the preferred direction, effectively enhancing mid-contrast borders. Using a population coding model, we show that these effects of alertness in simple cells—enhanced reliability, higher gain, and increased suppression in orthogonal orientation—could play a major role at increasing the speed of cortical feature detection.