PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - W. Bryan Wilent
AU  - Diego Contreras
TI  - Stimulus-Dependent Changes in Spike Threshold Enhance Feature Selectivity in Rat Barrel Cortex Neurons
AID  - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4906-04.2005
DP  - 2005 Mar 16
TA  - The Journal of Neuroscience
PG  - 2983--2991
VI  - 25
IP  - 11
4099  - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/25/11/2983.short
4100  - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/25/11/2983.full
SO  - J. Neurosci.2005 Mar 16; 25
AB  - Feature selectivity is a fundamental property of sensory cortex neurons, yet the mechanisms underlying its genesis are not fully understood. Using intracellular recordings in vivo from layers 2-6 of rat barrel cortex, we studied the selectivity of neurons to the angular direction of whisker deflection. The spike output and the underlying synaptic response decreased exponentially in magnitude as the direction of deflection diverged from the preferred. However, the spike output was more sharply tuned for direction than the underlying synaptic response amplitude. This difference in selectivity was attributable to the rectification imposed by the spike threshold on the input-output function of cells. As in the visual system, spike threshold was not constant and showed trial-to-trial variability. However, here we show that the mean spike threshold was direction dependent and increased as the direction diverged from the preferred. Spike threshold was also related to the rate of rise of the synaptic response, which was direction dependent and steepest for the preferred direction. To assess the impact of the direction-dependent changes in spike threshold on direction selectivity, we applied a fixed threshold to the synaptic responses and calculated a predicted spike output. The predicted output was more broadly tuned than the obtained spike response, demonstrating for the first time that the regulation of the spike threshold by the properties of the synaptic response effectively enhances the selectivity of the spike output.