Striate cortex articles from across Nature Portfolio

The neural mechanisms underpinning visual illusions remains poorly understood. Here, the authors recorded the neural responses of mouse primary visual cortex to illusory grating and found delayed responses to illusory brightness, showing that optogenetic inhibition of higher visual areas reduced V1 response to illusions but not to real gratings.

Auditory cortex sends dense projections to layer 1 of mouse V1. Here the authors show these axons convey rich sound localization signals and that their auditory receptive fields do not align with the retinotopic map of V1.

A novel device for selective large-scale optogenetic manipulation of the deep layers of cortical circuits in non-human primates is presented and validated using electrophysiological recordings and c-fos imaging in macaque visual cortex.

Sub-additive responses to simultaneously presented stimuli and quenching of variability in responses to repeated presentations of a stimulus are characteristics of neurons in the primary visual cortex. In this Perspective, Goris et al. argue that these phenomena often co-occur and may have common mechanistic and computational origins.

Whether visual illusions and mental imagery are similarly represented in visual cortex is not well understood. Here, the authors show that imagery content is mainly detectable in deep layers of V1, whereas illusory content is decodable mainly from superficial layers.

A 1997 paper, described here by Hiromasa Takemura, showed that variations in the size of the visual cortex in humans are correlated with those of other parts of the visual system.

To interact safely with our environment, we must be able to judge our confidence in what we perceive. But what cues do we use to compute perceptual confidence? Geurts et al.¹ decode brain activity and show that perceptual confidence is based on the distribution of sensory uncertainty, combining uncertainty driven by the input and the visual system.

Downward homeostatic regulation of neuronal firing rate in the visual cortex occurs via synaptic scaling and is enabled by sleep.

A new study finds that, in mice, location-related signals affect activity in the primary visual cortex.

Two studies show that cortical feedback and metabotropic glutamate receptor 1 are necessary for the proper refinement of reticulogeniculate synapses during visual system development.