Journal
JOURNAL OF NEUROPHYSIOLOGY
Volume 112, Issue 8, Pages 1963-1983Publisher
AMER PHYSIOLOGICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1152/jn.00737.2013
Keywords
high-level vision; population coding; position tolerance; rodent research; single-unit recordings
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Funding
- Human Frontier Science Program [CDA-0040/2008]
- Research Council Leuven [CREA/07/004, GOA/12/008]
- Fund for Scientific Research FWO-Flanders [G.0562.10]
- Research Council Leuven
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Recent studies have revealed a surprising degree of functional specialization in rodent visual cortex. Anatomically, suggestions have been made about the existence of hierarchical pathways with similarities to the ventral and dorsal pathways in primates. Here we aimed to characterize some important functional properties in part of the supposed ventral pathway in rats. We investigated the functional properties along a progression of five visual areas in awake rats, from primary visual cortex (V1) over lateromedial (LM), latero-intermediate (LI), and laterolateral (LL) areas up to the newly found lateral occipito-temporal cortex (TO). Response latency increased >20 ms from areas V1/LM/LI to areas LL and TO. Orientation and direction selectivity for the used grating patterns increased gradually from V1 to TO. Overall responsiveness and selectivity to shape stimuli decreased from V1 to TO and was increasingly dependent upon shape motion. Neural similarity for shapes could be accounted for by a simple computational model in V1, but not in the other areas. Across areas, we find a gradual change in which stimulus pairs are most discriminable. Finally, tolerance to position changes increased toward TO. These findings provide unique information about possible commonalities and differences between rodents and primates in hierarchical cortical processing.
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