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Adaptation maintains population homeostasis in primary visual cortex

Nature Neuroscience volume 16, pages 724–729 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Sensory systems exhibit mechanisms of neural adaptation, which adjust neuronal activity on the basis of recent stimulus history. In primary visual cortex (V1) in particular, adaptation controls the responsiveness of individual neurons and shifts their visual selectivity. What benefits does adaptation confer on a neuronal population? We measured adaptation in the responses of populations of cat V1 neurons to stimulus ensembles with markedly different statistics of stimulus orientation. We found that adaptation served two homeostatic goals. First, it maintained equality in the time-averaged responses across the population. Second, it maintained independence in selectivity across the population. Adaptation scaled and distorted population activity according to a simple multiplicative rule that depended on neuronal orientation preference and on stimulus orientation. We conclude that adaptation in V1 acts as a mechanism of homeostasis, enforcing a tendency toward equality and independence in neural activity across the population.

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Figure 1: Adaptation in visual cortex prevents biases in the population.
Figure 2: Adaptation equalizes population responses.
Figure 3: Adaptation decorrelates population responses.
Figure 4: Neuron-specific and stimulus-specific components of adaptation.
Figure 5: Effects of adaptation on tuning curves and population responses.
Figure 6: Adaptation to biased ensembles does not affect pairwise noise correlations.

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Acknowledgements

We thank L. Busse and S. Katzner for help with data acquisition, and numerous colleagues for useful suggestions. This work was supported by the US National Institutes of Health, the European Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. M.C. holds the GlaxoSmithKline/Fight for Sight Chair in Visual Neuroscience.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London, London, UK

    Andrea Benucci, Aman B Saleem & Matteo Carandini

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  1. Andrea Benucci
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  3. Matteo Carandini
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Contributions

A.B. and M.C. conceived the experiments, A.B. acquired the data, A.B. did the analysis in Figures 1,2,3, M.C. did the analysis in Figures 4 and 5, and A.S. did the analysis in Figure 6. A.B. and M.C. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Andrea Benucci.

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Benucci, A., Saleem, A. & Carandini, M. Adaptation maintains population homeostasis in primary visual cortex. Nat Neurosci 16, 724–729 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3382

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