Wang Y, Fujita I, Murayama Y
Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Osaka University Medical School, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
Nat Neurosci. 2000 Aug;3(8):807-13. doi: 10.1038/77712.
The inferotemporal cortex (area TE) of monkeys, a higher station of the visual information stream for object recognition, contains neurons selective for particular object features. Little is known about how and where this selectivity is generated. We show that blockade of inhibition mediated by gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) markedly altered the selectivity of TE neurons by augmenting their responses to some stimuli but not to others. The effects were observed for particular groups of stimuli related to the originally effective stimuli or those that did not originally excite the neurons but activated nearby neurons. Intrinsic neuronal interactions within area TE thus determine the final characteristic of their selectivity, and GABAergic inhibition contributes to this process.
猴子的颞下皮质（TE区）是用于物体识别的视觉信息流的高级站点，包含对特定物体特征具有选择性的神经元。对于这种选择性是如何产生的以及在哪里产生的，人们知之甚少。我们发现，由γ-氨基丁酸（GABA）介导的抑制作用的阻断，通过增强TE神经元对某些刺激而非其他刺激的反应，显著改变了TE神经元的选择性。对于与最初有效刺激相关的特定刺激组，或那些最初不激发神经元但激活附近神经元的刺激组，都观察到了这种效应。因此，TE区内的内在神经元相互作用决定了其选择性的最终特征，而GABA能抑制作用有助于这一过程。
