Sparseness of coding in area 17 of the cat visual cortex: A comparison between pinwheel centres and orientation domains

J Jayakumar; D Hu; TR Vidyasagar

Journal article

Sparseness of coding in area 17 of the cat visual cortex: A comparison between pinwheel centres and orientation domains

J Jayakumar, D Hu, TR Vidyasagar

Neuroscience | PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD | Published : 2012

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2012.08.064

Abstract

Optical imaging of intrinsic signals across the primary visual cortex in mammals has shown that neurons tuned to the same stimulus orientation are clustered together to form orientation domains, which converge on singularities called pinwheel centres. We used a combination of two gratings in different mutual relationships as in a plaid to study how visual cortical neurons differ in integrating these signals. Neurons in the centres of orientation domains responded to a smaller range of such composite stimuli than cells near pinwheel centres, even though orientation tuning for a single bar or grating did not differ significantly between the two locations. We believe that this difference betwee..

View full abstract

University of Melbourne Researchers

Trichur Vidyasagar Author

Related Projects (3)

Optical imaging of brain activity: studies of the neural basis of sensory perception, plasticity and behaviour

Basic to the understanding of the brain is to know how the overall architecture of the nervous system relates to its function. We propose t..

Synaptic and network properties underlying neural coding in the mammalian visual cortex

This study will: (1) Increase our basic understanding of visual function that can help to explain many clinical perceptual disturbances. (2..

Thalamo-cortical organisation in visual information processing

This study will: (1) Increase our basic understanding of visual function that can help to explain many clinical perceptual disturbances. (2)..

Grants

Funding Acknowledgements

The study was supported by a grant to T.R.V. from the Australian Research Council. We thank Peter Buzas for technical advice and Ayse Kara for assistance with some of the experiments.