Seminários em Neurociências 2011.2

The influence of lateral interactions on cortical representations

Profa. Kerstin Schmidt (Instituto do Cérebro - UFRN)
Long-range intrinsic connections are thought to modulate neuronal responses by supplying neurons with information from the context outside their classical receptive field. A hurdle to characterize the functional impact of those connections in detail is the difficulty to selectively silence them without directly affecting their target neurons. Interhemispheric projections via the corpus callosum share functional and anatomical properties with intrinsic connections by linking homotopic areas on both hemispheres, but exhibit the advantage of a clear spatial separation between origin and target. We thus directly examine impact and mechanism of lateral input influences on spiking and subthreshold activity in cat and ferret primary visual areas 17 and 18 while reversibly deactivating interhemispheric input. Our results support the hypothesis, that the transition from modulatory multiplicative to driving lateral inputs is a continuum and depends critically on the actual contribution of all possible input sources.
 
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Notícia cadastrada em: 16/08/2011 08:21
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