Differential Feedback Modulation of Center and Surround Mechanisms in Parvocellular Cells in the Visual Thalamus

By H. E. Jones, I. Andolina, B. Ahmed, S. Shipp, Jake T C Clements, K. Grieve, J. Cudeiro, T. Salt, A. Sillito. 2012

44 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Many cells in both the central visual system and other sensory systems exhibit a center surround organization in their receptive field, where the response to a centrally placed stimulus is modified when a surrounding area is also stimulated. This can follow from laterally directed connections in the local circuit at the level of the cell in question but could also involve more complex interactions. In the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), the cells relaying the retinal input display a concentric, center surround organization that in part follows from the similar organization characterizing the retinal cells providing their input. However, local thalamic inhibitory interneurons also play a role, and as we examine here, feedback from the visual cortex too. Here, we show in the primate (macaque) that spatially organized cortical feedback provides a clear and differential influence serving to enhance both responses to stimulation within the center of the receptive field and the ability of the nonclassical surround mechanism to attenuate this. In short, both center and surround mechanisms are influenced by the feedback. This dynamically sharpens the spatial focus of the receptive field and introduces nonlinearities from the cortical mechanism into the LGN.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Molecular Biology

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Frank Tong
2. S. Shipp
3. C. Varela
4. R. von der Heydt
5. Nikolaus Kriegeskorte
6. John-Dylan Haynes

In Molecular Biology

1. Frank Tong
2. C. Varela

Citations in the corpus

• Thalamic neuromodulation and its implications for executive networks (2014, background): “In the visual system, layer VI corticothalamic projections can influence centersurround strength without changing the spatial selectivity of receptive fields (Rivadulla et al., 2002; Jones et al., 2012).”
• Figure-ground modulation in awake primate thalamus (2015, methodology): “We believe it is consistent with a system that relays minimal information to a “nonsalient stimulus” (7, 11) and that the “global” salience detected by higher-level feature detectors, sampling larger areas of visual space, is fed back and modulates the response to the underlying retinal excitatory i”
• Foundations of Vision (2018, background): “Some researchers have emphasized that such modulatory effects are due to retinal mechanisms, whereas others have proposed the importance of feedback from V1 to LGN (Sillito, Cudeiro, & Jones, 2006; Alitto & Usrey, 2008; Jones et al., 2012; Usrey & Alitto, 2015).”