RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 A global map of orientation tuning in mouse visual cortex
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 745323
DO 10.1101/745323
A1 Paul G. Fahey
A1 Taliah Muhammad
A1 Cameron Smith
A1 Emmanouil Froudarakis
A1 Erick Cobos
A1 Jiakun Fu
A1 Edgar Y. Walker
A1 Dimitri Yatsenko
A1 Fabian H. Sinz
A1 Jacob Reimer
A1 Andreas S. Tolias
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/08/23/745323.abstract
AB In primates and most carnivores, neurons in primary visual cortex are spatially organized by their functional properties. For example, neurons with similar orientation preferences are grouped together in iso-orientation domains that smoothly vary over the cortical sheet. In rodents, on the other hand, neurons with different orientation preferences are thought to be spatially intermingled, a feature which has been termed “salt-and-pepper” organization. The apparent absence of any systematic structure in orientation tuning has been considered a defining feature of the rodent visual system for more than a decade, with broad implications for brain development, visual processing, and comparative neurophysiology. Here, we revisited this question using new techniques for wide-field two-photon calcium imaging that enabled us to collect nearly complete population tuning preferences in layers 2-4 across a large fraction of the mouse visual hierarchy. Examining the orientation tuning of these hundreds of thousands of neurons, we found a global map spanning multiple visual cortical areas in which orientation bias was organized around a single pinwheel centered in V1. This pattern was consistent across animals and cortical depth. The existence of this global organization in rodents has implications for our understanding of visual processing and the principles governing the ontogeny and phylogeny of the visual cortex of mammals.