Computational Neurosciences Graduate Program, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0634, USA.
Neuron. 2012 Jan 12;73(1):159-70. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2011.12.013.
The response of cortical neurons to a sensory stimulus is shaped by the network in which they are embedded. Here we establish a role of parvalbumin (PV)-expressing cells, a large class of inhibitory neurons that target the soma and perisomatic compartments of pyramidal cells, in controlling cortical responses. By bidirectionally manipulating PV cell activity in visual cortex we show that these neurons strongly modulate layer 2/3 pyramidal cell spiking responses to visual stimuli while only modestly affecting their tuning properties. PV cells' impact on pyramidal cells is captured by a linear transformation, both additive and multiplicative, with a threshold. These results indicate that PV cells are ideally suited to modulate cortical gain and establish a causal relationship between a select neuron type and specific computations performed by the cortex during sensory processing.
皮质神经元对感觉刺激的反应受到其所处网络的影响。在这里，我们确定了表达 parvalbumin (PV) 的细胞在控制皮质反应中的作用。表达 parvalbumin (PV) 的细胞是一类大型抑制性神经元，它们的靶标是锥体细胞的胞体和周质区域。通过在视觉皮层中双向操纵 PV 细胞的活动，我们发现这些神经元强烈调节了对视觉刺激的 2/3 层锥体细胞的尖峰反应，而对其调谐特性的影响则相对较小。PV 细胞对锥体细胞的影响可以通过一个线性变换来捕获，这个变换具有阈值，包括加性和乘性两种形式。这些结果表明，PV 细胞非常适合调节皮质增益，并在感觉处理过程中建立了一种特定神经元类型与皮质执行的特定计算之间的因果关系。
