Orientation Tuning of the Suppressive Extraclassical Surround Depends on Intrinsic Organization of V1

The intrinsic functional architecture of early cortical areas in highly visual mammals is characterized by the presence of domains and pinwheels, with orientation preference of the inputs to these regions being more and less selective, respectively. We exploited this organizational feature to invest...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. 1991) N.Y. 1991), 2012-02, Vol.22 (2), p.308-326
Main Authors: Hashemi-Nezhad, Maziar, Lyon, David C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Action Potentials - physiology
Animals
Brain Mapping
Cats
Contrast Sensitivity - physiology
Female
Male
Models, Neurological
Neural Inhibition - physiology
Neurons - physiology
Orientation - physiology
Photic Stimulation
Statistics, Nonparametric
Visual Cortex - cytology
Visual Fields - physiology
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Summary:The intrinsic functional architecture of early cortical areas in highly visual mammals is characterized by the presence of domains and pinwheels, with orientation preference of the inputs to these regions being more and less selective, respectively. We exploited this organizational feature to investigate mechanisms supporting extraclassical surround suppression, a process thought to be critical for figure ground segregation and form vision. Combining intrinsic signal optical imaging and single-unit recording in V1 of anesthetized cats, we show for the first time that the orientation tuning of the suppressive surround is sharper for domain than for pinwheel neurons. This difference depends on high center gain and is more pronounced in superficial cortex. In addition, when we remove the near component of the surround stimulus, the strength of suppression induced by the iso-oriented surround is significantly reduced for domain neurons but is unchanged for orthogonal oriented surrounds. This leads to broader orientation tuning of suppression that renders domain cells indistinguishable from pinwheel cells. Because the limited receptive field of the near surround can be accounted for by the lateral spread of long-range connections in V1, our findings suggest that intrinsic V1 circuits play a key role in the orientation tuning of extraclassical surround suppression.
ISSN:1047-3211
1460-2199
DOI:10.1093/cercor/bhr105