Department of Neuroscience, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
Neuron. 2012 Apr 12;74(1):193-205. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.01.032.
Primates can learn to recognize a virtually limitless number of visual objects. A candidate neural substrate for this adult plasticity is the inferior temporal cortex (ITC). Using a large stimulus set, we explored the impact that long-term experience has on the response properties of two classes of neurons in ITC: broad-spiking (putative excitatory) cells and narrow-spiking (putative inhibitory) cells. We found that experience increased maximum responses of putative excitatory neurons but had the opposite effect on maximum responses of putative inhibitory neurons, an observation that helps to reconcile contradictory reports regarding the presence and direction of this effect. In addition, we found that experience reduced the average stimulus-evoked response in both cell classes, but this decrease was much more pronounced in putative inhibitory units. This latter finding supports a potentially critical role of inhibitory neurons in detecting and initiating the cascade of events underlying adult neural plasticity in ITC.
灵长类动物可以学习识别几乎无限数量的视觉对象。下颞叶皮层(ITC)是这种成年可塑性的候选神经基质。使用大型刺激集,我们探索了长期经验对 ITC 中两类神经元的反应特性的影响:宽脉冲(推测为兴奋性)细胞和窄脉冲(推测为抑制性)细胞。我们发现,经验增加了推测兴奋性神经元的最大反应,但对推测抑制性神经元的最大反应却产生了相反的影响,这一观察结果有助于调和关于这种影响的存在和方向的相互矛盾的报告。此外,我们发现经验减少了两类细胞的平均刺激诱发反应,但在推测的抑制性单位中,这种减少更为明显。这一发现支持了抑制性神经元在检测和启动 ITC 中成年神经可塑性的潜在关键作用。