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Title: Stimulus edges induce orientation tuning in superior colliculus

Journal Article · · Nature Communications
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [3]; ORCiD logo [4]
  1. Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore, MD (United States). School of Medicine; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, VA (United States)
  2. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, VA (United States)
  3. University of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  4. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, VA (United States); University of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Orientation columns exist in the primary visual cortex (V1) of cat and primates but not mouse. Intriguingly, some recent studies reported the presence of orientation and direction columns in the mouse superficial superior colliculus (sSC), while others reported a lack of columnar organization therein. Using in vivo calcium imaging of sSC in the awake mouse brain, we found that the presence of columns is highly stimulus dependent. Specifically, we observed orientation and direction columns formed by sSC neurons retinotopically mapped to the edge of grating stimuli. For both excitatory and inhibitory neurons in sSC, orientation selectivity can be induced by the edge with their preferred orientation perpendicular to the edge orientation. Furthermore, we found that this edge-induced orientation selectivity is associated with saliency encoding. These findings indicate that the tuning properties of sSC neurons are not fixed by circuit architecture but rather dependent on the spatiotemporal properties of the stimulus.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
2470642
Journal Information:
Nature Communications, Journal Name: Nature Communications Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 14; ISSN 2041-1723
Publisher:
Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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