Stimulus relevance modulates contrast adaptation in visual cortex
- University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Switzerland
- University College London, United Kingdom
- University of Zurich, Switzerland
- Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Switzerland
Abstract
A general principle of sensory processing is that neurons adapt to sustained stimuli by reducing their response over time. Most of our knowledge on adaptation in single cells is based on experiments in anesthetized animals. How responses adapt in awake animals, when stimuli may be behaviorally relevant or not, remains unclear. Here we show that contrast adaptation in mouse primary visual cortex depends on the behavioral relevance of the stimulus. Cells that adapted to contrast under anesthesia maintained or even increased their activity in awake naïve mice. When engaged in a visually guided task, contrast adaptation re-occurred for stimuli that were irrelevant for solving the task. However, contrast adaptation was reversed when stimuli acquired behavioral relevance. Regulation of cortical adaptation by task demand may allow dynamic control of sensory-evoked signal flow in the neocortex.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
FP7 EU (Grant 269921)
- Björn M Kampa
- Fritjof Helmchen
Novartis Research Foundation
- Georg B Keller
European Research Council (Grant 616509)
- Thomas D Mrsic-Flogel
Wellcome Trust (Grant 095074)
- Thomas D Mrsic-Flogel
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All experiments and surgical procedures were carried out in accordance with the UK Animal (Scientific Procedures) Act under project license 70/7573, approved by the Cantonal Veterinary Office of Zurich, Switzerland, under license number 62/2011, or by the Cantonal Veterinary Office of Basel-Stadt, Switzerland, under license number 2537.
Copyright
© 2017, Keller et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Stimulus relevance modulates contrast adaptation in visual cortex
eLife 6:e21589.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.21589
