Topic: salt-and-pepper pattern

To support perception, visual cortex transforms sensory-related input to create hierarchical representations. Local recurrent connections between nearby neurons can potentially exert large effects on these transformations, but it has been unclear how recurrent connections influence input-output transformations in the cortex. Here we study recurrent influences in mouse V1 by experimentally stimulating excitatory neurons. To do this, we selectively express an excitatory opsin (stChrimsonR) in excitatory cells, and record activity using electrophysiology, 2-photon, and widefield calcium imaging