PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - R. Oz
AU  - H. Edelman-Klapper
AU  - S. Nivinsky-Margalit
AU  - H. Slovin
TI  - Microstimulation in the primary visual cortex: activity patterns and their relation to visual responses and evoked saccades
AID  - 10.1101/2020.05.03.072322
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.05.03.072322
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/05/04/2020.05.03.072322.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/05/04/2020.05.03.072322.full
AB  - Intra cortical microstimulation (ICMS) in the primary visual cortex (V1) can generate the visual perception of phosphenes and evoke saccades directed to the stimulated location in the retinotopic map. Although ICMS is widely used, little is known about the evoked spatio-temporal patterns of neural activity and their relation to neural responses evoked by visual stimuli or saccade generation. To investigate this, we combined ICMS with Voltage Sensitive Dye Imaging in V1 of behaving monkeys and measured neural activity at high spatial (meso-scale) and temporal resolution. Small visual stimuli and ICMS evoked population activity spreading over few mm that propagated to extrastriate areas. The population responses evoked by ICMS showed faster dynamics and different spatial propagation patterns. Neural activity was higher in trials w/saccades compared with trials w/o saccades. In conclusion, our results uncover the spatio-temporal patterns evoked by ICMS and their relation to visual processing and saccade generation.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.