Robust effects of corticothalamic feedback during naturalistic visual stimulation

Spacek, Martin A.; Born, Gregory; Crombie, Davide; Bauer, Yannik; Liu, Xinyu; Katzner, Steffen und Busse, Laura (24. August 2020): Robust effects of corticothalamic feedback during naturalistic visual stimulation. In: BioRxiv

Abstract

Neurons in the dorsolateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN) of the thalamus are contacted by a large number of feedback synapses from cortex, whose role in visual processing is poorly understood. Past studies investigating this role have mostly used simple visual stimuli and anesthetized animals, but corticothalamic (CT) feedback might be particularly relevant during processing of complex visual stimuli, and its effects might depend on behavioral state. Here, we find that CT feedback robustly modulates responses to naturalistic movie clips by increasing response gain and promoting tonic firing mode. Compared to these robust effects for naturalistic movies, CT feedback effects on firing rates were less consistent for simple grating stimuli, likely related to differences in spatial context. Finally, while CT feedback and locomotion affected dLGN responses in similar ways, we found their effects to be largely independent. We propose that CT feedback and behavioral state use separate circuits to modulate visual information on its way to cortex in a context-dependent manner.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Biologie > Department Biologie II > Neurobiologie
• Themengebiete: 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik > 570 Biowissenschaften; Biologie
• Sprache: Englisch