Neurosciences Graduate Program, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
Center for Neural Circuits and Behavior, Neurobiology Section and Department of Neuroscience, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
Nature. 2018 Jun;558(7708):80-86. doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0148-5. Epub 2018 May 23.
Detecting the direction of motion of an object is essential for our representation of the visual environment. The visual cortex is one of the main stages in the mammalian nervous system in which the direction of motion may be computed de novo. Experiments and theories indicate that cortical neurons respond selectively to motion direction by combining inputs that provide information about distinct spatial locations with distinct time delays. Despite the importance of this spatiotemporal offset for direction selectivity, its origin and cellular mechanisms are not fully understood. We show that approximately 80 ± 10 thalamic neurons, which respond with distinct time courses to stimuli in distinct locations, excite mouse visual cortical neurons during visual stimulation. The integration of thalamic inputs with the appropriate spatiotemporal offset provides cortical neurons with a primordial bias for direction selectivity. These data show how cortical neurons selectively combine the spatiotemporal response diversity of thalamic neurons to extract fundamental features of the visual world.
检测物体的运动方向对于我们对视觉环境的表示至关重要。视觉皮层是哺乳动物神经系统中的主要阶段之一，在这个阶段中，可以重新计算运动方向。实验和理论表明，皮质神经元通过将提供关于不同空间位置和不同时间延迟的信息的输入组合起来，选择性地响应运动方向。尽管这种时空偏移对于方向选择性很重要，但它的起源和细胞机制尚不完全清楚。我们表明，大约有 80±10 个丘脑神经元，它们以不同的时间进程对不同位置的刺激做出反应，在视觉刺激期间会兴奋小鼠的视觉皮层神经元。丘脑输入与适当的时空偏移的整合为皮层神经元提供了方向选择性的原始偏向。这些数据表明，皮层神经元如何选择性地组合丘脑神经元的时空响应多样性，以提取视觉世界的基本特征。
