Superficial layer pyramidal cells communicate heterogeneously between multiple functional domains of cat primary visual cortex

The axons of pyramidal neurons in the superficial layers of the neocortex of higher mammals form lateral networks of discrete clusters of synaptic boutons. In primary visual cortex the clusters are reported to link domains that share the same orientation preferences, but how individual neurons contribute to this network is unknown. Here we performed optical imaging to record the intrinsic signal, which is an indirect measure of neuronal firing, and determined the global map of orientation preferences in the cat primary visual system. In the same experiment, single cells were recorded and labelled intracellularly. We found that individual axons arborise within the retinotopic representation of the classical receptive field, but their bouton clusters were not aligned along their preferred axis of orientation along the retinotopic map. Axon clusters formed in a variety of different orientation domains, not just the like-orientation domains. This topography and heterogeneity of single-cell connectivity provides circuits for normalization and context-dependent feature processing of visual scenes.