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Research Articles, Systems/Circuits

Brief Stimuli Cast a Persistent Long-Term Trace in Visual Cortex

Matthias Fritsche, Samuel G. Solomon and Floris P. de Lange
Journal of Neuroscience 9 March 2022, 42 (10) 1999-2010; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1350-21.2021
Matthias Fritsche
1Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, 6525 EN Nijmegen, The Netherlands
2Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PT, United Kingdom
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Samuel G. Solomon
3Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience, Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London WC1H 0AP, United Kingdom
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Floris P. de Lange
1Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, 6525 EN Nijmegen, The Netherlands
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Abstract

Visual processing is strongly influenced by recent stimulus history, a phenomenon termed adaptation. Prominent theories cast adaptation as a consequence of optimized encoding of visual information by exploiting the temporal statistics of the world. However, this would require the visual system to track the history of individual briefly experienced events, within a stream of visual input, to build up statistical representations over longer timescales. Here, using an openly available dataset from the Allen Brain Observatory, we show that neurons in the early visual cortex of the mouse indeed maintain long-term traces of individual past stimuli that persist despite the presentation of several intervening stimuli, leading to long-term and stimulus-specific adaptation over dozens of seconds. Long-term adaptation was selectively expressed in cortical, but not in thalamic, neurons, which only showed short-term adaptation. Early visual cortex thus maintains concurrent stimulus-specific memory traces of past input, enabling the visual system to build up a statistical representation of the world to optimize the encoding of new information in a changing environment.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT In the natural world, previous sensory input is predictive of current input over multisecond timescales. The visual system could exploit these predictabilities by adapting current visual processing to the long-term history of visual input. However, it is unclear whether the visual system can track the history of individual briefly experienced images, within a stream of input, to build up statistical representations over such long timescales. Here, we show that neurons in early visual cortex of the mouse brain exhibit remarkably long-term adaptation to brief stimuli, persisting over dozens of seconds, and despite the presentation of several intervening stimuli. The visual cortex thus maintains long-term traces of individual briefly experienced past images, enabling the formation of statistical representations over extended timescales.

  • long-term adaptation
  • mouse
  • sensory adaptation
  • sensory encoding
  • visual cortex
  • visual processing

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The Journal of Neuroscience: 42 (10)
Journal of Neuroscience
Vol. 42, Issue 10
9 Mar 2022
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Brief Stimuli Cast a Persistent Long-Term Trace in Visual Cortex
Matthias Fritsche, Samuel G. Solomon, Floris P. de Lange
Journal of Neuroscience 9 March 2022, 42 (10) 1999-2010; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1350-21.2021

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Brief Stimuli Cast a Persistent Long-Term Trace in Visual Cortex
Matthias Fritsche, Samuel G. Solomon, Floris P. de Lange
Journal of Neuroscience 9 March 2022, 42 (10) 1999-2010; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1350-21.2021
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Keywords

  • long-term adaptation
  • mouse
  • sensory adaptation
  • sensory encoding
  • visual cortex
  • visual processing

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