RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Robust effects of cortical feedback on thalamic firing mode during naturalistic stimulation
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 776237
DO 10.1101/776237
A1 Martin A. Spacek
A1 Gregory Born
A1 Davide Crombie
A1 Steffen Katzner
A1 Laura Busse
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/09/20/776237.1.abstract
AB Neurons in the dorsolateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN) of the thalamus are contacted by a large number of feedback synapses from cortex, whose role in visual processing is poorly understood. Past studies investigating this role have mostly used simple visual stimuli and anesthetized animals, but corticothalamic (CT) feedback might be particularly relevant during processing of complex visual stimuli, and its effects might depend on behavioral state. Here, we find that CT feedback robustly modulates responses to naturalistic movie clips by increasing response gain and promoting tonic firing mode. Compared to these robust effects for naturalistic movies, CT feedback effects were less consistent for simple grating stimuli. Finally, while CT feedback and locomotion affected dLGN responses in similar ways, we found their effects to be largely independent. We propose that CT feedback and behavioral state use separate routes to powerfully modulate visual information on its way to cortex.