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Neurobiology

Synapses get together for vision

Nature volume 547, pages 408–410 (2017)Cite this article

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A sophisticated analysis in mice of how inputs to neurons from other neurons are distributed across individual cells of the brain's visual cortex provides information about how mammalian vision is processed. See Letter p.449

A typical pyramidal neuron in the brain's visual cortex receives thousands of excitatory signals from other neurons, transmitted across connections called synapses. These inputs from presynaptic neurons end on tiny protrusions called spines on the postsynaptic neuron's tree-like processes (dendrites). In principle, when a sufficient number of inputs are active at the same time, the postsynaptic neuron will fire. But not all inputs are equal: it matters where on the dendritic tree an input is located, and whether it is activated by similar stimuli to those that activate its neighbours, allowing simultaneously active inputs to team up for greater impact1. On page 449, Iacaruso et al.2 describe how inputs activated by stimuli at different locations in visual space are mapped onto the dendrites of neurons in the visual cortex.

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Figure 1: Mapping visual space onto individual neurons.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried, 82152, Germany

    Tobias Rose & Mark Hübener

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  1. Tobias Rose
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  2. Mark Hübener
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Correspondence to Tobias Rose or Mark Hübener.

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Rose, T., Hübener, M. Synapses get together for vision. Nature 547, 408–410 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature23098

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