Shanghai Institutes of Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
PLoS One. 2010 Nov 29;5(11):e15025. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0015025.
In V1 of cats and monkeys, activity of neurons evoked by stimuli within the receptive field can be modulated by stimuli in the extra-receptive field (ERF). This modulating effect can be suppressive (S-ERF) or facilitatory (F-ERF) and plays different roles in visual information processing. Little is known about the cellular bases underlying the different types of ERF modulating effects. Here, we focus on the morphological differences between the S-ERF and F-ERF neurons. Single unit activities were recorded from V1 of the cat. The ERF properties of each neuron were assessed by area-response functions using sinusoidal grating stimuli. On completion of the functional tests, the cells were injected intracellularly with biocytin. The labeled cells were reconstructed and morphologically characterized in terms of the ERF modulation effects. We show that the vast majority of S-ERF neurons and F-ERF neurons are pyramidal cells and that the two types of cells clearly differ in the size of the soma, in complexity of dendrite branching, in spine size and density, and in the range of innervations of the axon collaterals. We propose that different pyramidal cell phenotypes reflect a high degree of specificity of neuronal connections associated with different types of spatial modulation.
在猫和猴子的 V1 中，感受野内的刺激引起的神经元活动可以被感受野外的刺激（ERF）调制。这种调制效应可以是抑制性的（S-ERF）或易化性的（F-ERF），在视觉信息处理中发挥不同的作用。关于不同类型的 ERF 调制效应的细胞基础知之甚少。在这里，我们关注 S-ERF 和 F-ERF 神经元之间的形态差异。从猫的 V1 中记录了单个单位的活动。使用正弦光栅刺激通过面积反应函数评估每个神经元的 ERF 特性。完成功能测试后，将细胞用生物胞素内注射。标记的细胞被重建，并根据 ERF 调制效应在形态上进行特征描述。我们表明，绝大多数 S-ERF 神经元和 F-ERF 神经元是锥体神经元，并且这两种类型的细胞在胞体大小、树突分支的复杂性、棘突大小和密度以及轴突侧支的支配范围方面明显不同。我们提出，不同的锥体细胞表型反映了与不同类型的空间调制相关的神经元连接的高度特异性。
