Topic: co-tuned reciprocal connections

Cortical excitatory (E) neurons exhibit clear tuning to stimulus features, but the tuning properties of inhibitory interneurons remain ambiguous. While inhibitory neurons are traditionally viewed as functionally and structurally untuned [1-4], recent studies indicate that parvalbumin-expressing (PV) neurons do show feature selectivity and establish co-tuned reciprocal connections with individual pyramidal neurons at a pairwise level [5-7]. Using mean-field theory and large-scale network simulations of spiking cells (Fig. 1A), we reconcile these seemingly contradictory findings by demonstrating