MT1 Neuron.pdf (3.55 MB)
Mechanisms of spatiotemporal selectivity in cortical area MT
journal contribution
posted on 2019-01-11, 14:59 authored by Ambarish S. Pawar, Sergei Gepshtein, Sergey SavelievSergey Saveliev, Thomas D AlbrightCortical sensory neurons are characterized by selectivity to stimulation. This selectivity was
originally viewed as a part of the fundamental “receptive field” characteristic of neurons. This view
was later challenged by evidence that receptive fields are modulated by stimuli outside of the
classical receptive field. Here we show that even this modified view of selectivity needs revision.
We measured spatial frequency selectivity of neurons in cortical area MT of alert monkeys and
found that their selectivity strongly depends on luminance contrast, shifting to higher spatial
frequencies as contrast increases. The changes of preferred spatial frequency are large at low
temporal frequency and they decrease monotonically as temporal frequency increases. That is,
even interactions among basic stimulus dimensions of luminance contrast, spatial frequency and
temporal frequency strongly influence neuronal selectivity. This dynamic nature of neuronal
selectivity is inconsistent with the notion of stimulus preference as a stable characteristic of
cortical neurons.
History
School
- Science
Department
- Physics
Published in
NeuronVolume
101Issue
3Pages
514-527.e2Citation
PAWAR, A.S. ... et al., 2019. Mechanisms of spatiotemporal selectivity in cortical area MT. Neuron, 101(3), pp. 514-527.e2.Publisher
Elsevier BVVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Neuron and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2018.12.002Acceptance date
2018-12-03Publication date
2018-12-31Copyright date
2019ISSN
0896-6273Publisher version
Language
- en