TY - JOUR TI - Three rules govern thalamocortical connectivity of fast-spike inhibitory interneurons in the visual cortex AU - Bereshpolova, Yulia AU - Hei, Xiaojuan AU - Alonso, Jose-Manuel AU - Swadlow, Harvey A A2 - Huguenard, John R A2 - Contreras, Diego A2 - Connors, Barry VL - 9 PY - 2020 DA - 2020/12/08 SP - e60102 C1 - eLife 2020;9:e60102 DO - 10.7554/eLife.60102 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.60102 AB - Some cortical neurons receive highly selective thalamocortical (TC) input, but others do not. Here, we examine connectivity of single thalamic neurons (lateral geniculate nucleus, LGN) onto putative fast-spike inhibitory interneurons in layer 4 of rabbit visual cortex. We show that three ‘rules’ regulate this connectivity. These rules concern: (1) the precision of retinotopic alignment, (2) the amplitude of the postsynaptic local field potential elicited near the interneuron by spikes of the LGN neuron, and (3) the interneuron’s response latency to strong, synchronous LGN input. We found that virtually all first-order fast-spike interneurons receive input from nearly all LGN axons that synapse nearby, regardless of their visual response properties. This was not the case for neighboring regular-spiking neurons. We conclude that profuse and highly promiscuous TC inputs to layer-4 fast-spike inhibitory interneurons generate response properties that are well-suited to mediate a fast, sensitive, and broadly tuned feed-forward inhibition of visual cortical excitatory neurons. KW - rules of synaptic connectivity KW - thalamocortical specificity KW - fast-spike interneuron KW - feedforward inhibition KW - rabbit JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -