Nature Neuroscience6, 1300 - 1308 (2003)
Published online: 16 November 2003; | doi:10.1038/nn1152
Functionally distinct inhibitory neurons at the first stage of visual cortical processing
Judith A Hirsch1, Luis M Martinez2, Cinthi Pillai1, Jose-Manuel Alonso3, Qingbo Wang1
& Friedrich T Sommer4
1
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Southern California, 3641 Watt Way, Los Angeles, California 90089-2520, USA.
2
Department of Medicine, Campus de Oza, Universidad A Coruña, 15006 Spain.
3
Department of Biological Sciences, SUNY-Optometry, 33 West 42nd Street, New York, New York 10036, USA.
4
Redwood Neuroscience Institute, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park, California 94025, USA.
Correspondence should be addressed to Judith A Hirsch jhirsch@usc.edu
Here we explore inhibitory circuits at the thalamocortical stage of processing in layer 4 of the cat's visual cortex, focusing on the anatomy and physiology of the interneurons themselves. Our immediate aim was to explore the inhibitory mechanisms that contribute to orientation selectivity, perhaps the most dramatic response property to emerge across the thalamocortical synapse. The broader goal was to understand how inhibitory circuits operate. Using whole-cell recording in cats in vivo, we found that layer 4 contains two populations of inhibitory cells defined by receptive field class—simple and complex. The simple cells were selective for stimulus orientation, whereas the complex cells were not. Our observations help to explain how neurons become sensitive to stimulus orientation and maintain that selectivity as stimulus contrast changes. Overall, the work suggests that different sources of inhibition, either selective for specific features or broadly tuned, interact to provide appropriate representations of elements within the environment.
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