Development of cross-orientation suppression and size tuning and the role of experience

Marjena Popović, Andrea K. Stacy, Mihwa Kang, Roshan Nanu, Charlotte E. Oettgen, Derek L. Wise, József Fiser, Stephen D. Van Hooser*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Many sensory neural circuits exhibit response normalization, which occurs when the response of a neuron to a combination of multiple stimuli is less than the sum of the responses to the individual stimuli presented alone. In the visual cortex, normalization takes the forms of cross-orientation suppression and surround suppression. At the onset of visual experience, visual circuits are partially developed and exhibit some mature features such as orientation selectivity, but it is unknown whether cross-orientation suppression is present at the onset of visual experience or requires visual experience for its emergence. We characterized the development of normalization and its dependence on visual experience in female ferrets. Visual experience was varied across the following three conditions: typical rearing, dark rearing, and dark rearing with daily exposure to simple sinusoidal gratings (14–16 h total). Cross-orientation suppression and surround suppression were noted in the earliest observations, and did not vary considerably with experience. We also observed evidence of continued maturation of receptive field properties in the second month of visual experience: substantial length summation was observed only in the oldest animals(postnatal day90); evokedfiringratesweregreatlyincreasedinolderanimals; anddirectionselectivityrequiredexperience, butdeclined slightly in older animals. These results constrain the space of possible circuit implementations of these features.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2656-2670
Number of pages15
JournalJournal of Neuroscience
Volume38
Issue number11
DOIs
StatePublished - 14 Mar 2018

Keywords

  • Development
  • Divisive normalization
  • Nature
  • Nurture
  • Sensory cortex
  • Vision

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