Topic: lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN)

Orientation selectivity is a key feature of primary visual cortex (V1). Orientation specific receptive fields (OSRFs) appear to arise from specific feedforward connectivity from lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) to V1 cells. OSRF development has been hypothesized to arise from a competition between ON- and OFF-center LGN cells, if the difference between same-type and opposite-type correlation functions is a non-monotonic, "Mexican hat" function of cell-cell separation. However experiments found this difference decays monotonically. Many models have assumed "Mexican hat" recurrent connectivity (

Brain-wide neuromodulation by behavioral variables, such as locomotion, pupil area, and face motion, have been observed in mice (Stringer et al., 2019; Musall et al., 2019). To study this mechanism at higher spatial resolution, we used two-photon imaging that allows recording of individual neuronal and synaptic bouton activity in mouse primary visual cortex (V1), while the animal's face was simultaneously videotaped. We aim to understand how face motion is related to the population activity of both cortical neurons and their lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) afferents, during both visual stimul