Skriabine Sophie, Shinn Maxwell, Picard Samuel, Harris Kenneth D, Carandini Matteo
University College London.
bioRxiv. 2025 Jul 23:2025.07.19.665666. doi: 10.1101/2025.07.19.665666.
Studies of the early visual system often require characterizing the visual preferences of large populations of neurons. This task typically requires multiple stimuli such as sparse noise and drifting gratings, each of which probe only a limited set of visual features. Here we introduce a new dynamic stimulus with sharp-edged stripes called Zebra noise and a new analysis model based on wavelets, and show that in combination they are highly efficient for mapping multiple aspects of the visual preferences of thousands of neurons. We used two-photon calcium imaging to record the activity of neurons in the mouse visual cortex. Zebra noise elicited strong responses that were more repeatable than those evoked by traditional stimuli. The wavelet-based model captured the repeatable aspects of the resulting responses, providing measures of neuronal tuning for multiple stimulus features: position, orientation, size, spatial frequency, drift rate, and direction. The method proved efficient, requiring only 3 minutes of stimulation (repeated 3 times) to characterize the tuning of thousands of neurons across visual areas. In combination, the Zebra noise stimulus and the wavelet-based model provide a broadly applicable toolkit for the rapid characterization of visual representations, promising to accelerate future studies of visual function.
对早期视觉系统的研究通常需要刻画大量神经元的视觉偏好。这项任务通常需要多种刺激，如稀疏噪声和漂移光栅，每种刺激仅探测有限的一组视觉特征。在此，我们引入一种名为斑马噪声的带有锐边条纹的新动态刺激以及一种基于小波的新分析模型，并表明它们结合起来对于描绘数千个神经元视觉偏好的多个方面非常高效。我们使用双光子钙成像来记录小鼠视觉皮层中神经元的活动。斑马噪声引发的强烈反应比传统刺激所引发的反应更具重复性。基于小波的模型捕捉了所产生反应的可重复方面，提供了针对多种刺激特征（位置、方向、大小、空间频率、漂移率和方向）的神经元调谐测量。该方法被证明是高效的，仅需3分钟的刺激（重复3次）就能刻画跨视觉区域数千个神经元的调谐情况。斑马噪声刺激和基于小波的模型相结合，为视觉表征的快速刻画提供了一个广泛适用的工具包，有望加速未来对视觉功能的研究。
