Probing feature selectivity of neurons in primary visual cortex with natural stimuli

Tatyana Sharpee; Hiroki Sugihara; A. V. Kurgansky; S. Rebrik; M. P. Stryker; Kenneth D. Miller

doi:10.1117/12.548513

25 May 2004 Probing feature selectivity of neurons in primary visual cortex with natural stimuli

Tatyana Sharpee, Hiroki Sugihara, A. V. Kurgansky, S. Rebrik, M. P. Stryker, Kenneth D. Miller

Proceedings Volume 5467, Fluctuations and Noise in Biological, Biophysical, and Biomedical Systems II; (2004) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.548513
Event: Second International Symposium on Fluctuations and Noise, 2004, Maspalomas, Gran Canaria Island, Spain

Abstract

One way to characterize neural feature selectivity is to model the response probability as a nonlinear function of the output of a set of linear filters applied to incoming signals. Traditionally these linear filters are measured by probing neurons with correlated Gaussian noise ensembles and calculating correlation functions between incoming signals and neural responses. It is also important to derive these filters in response to natural stimuli, which have been shown to have strongly non-Gaussian spatiotemporal correlations. An information-theoretic method has been proposed recently for reconstructing neural filters using natural stimuli in which one looks for filters whose convolution with the stimulus ensemble accounts for the maximal possible part of the overall information carried the sequence of neural responses. Here we give a first-time demonstration of this method on real neural data, and compare responses of neurons in cat primary visual cortex driven with natural stimuli, noise ensembles, and moving gratings. We show that the information-theoretic method achieves the same quality of filter reconstruction for natural stimuli as that of well-established white-noise methods. Major parameters of neural filters derived from noise ensembles and natural stimuli, as well as from moving gratings are consistent with one another. We find that application of the reverse correlation method to natural stimuli ensembles leads to significant distortions in filters for a majority of studied cells with non-zero reverse-correlation filter.

Citation Download Citation

Tatyana Sharpee, Hiroki Sugihara, A. V. Kurgansky, S. Rebrik, M. P. Stryker, and Kenneth D. Miller "Probing feature selectivity of neurons in primary visual cortex with natural stimuli", Proc. SPIE 5467, Fluctuations and Noise in Biological, Biophysical, and Biomedical Systems II, (25 May 2004); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.548513

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