Gamma rhythms and visual information in mouse V1 specifically modulated by somatostatin+ neurons in reticular thalamus
Abstract
Visual perception in natural environments depends on the ability to focus on salient stimuli while ignoring distractions. This kind of selective visual attention is associated with gamma activity in the visual cortex. While the nucleus reticularis thalami (nRT) has been implicated in selective attention, its role in modulating gamma activity in the visual cortex remains unknown. Here we show that somatostatin- (SST) but not parvalbumin-expressing (PV) neurons in the visual sector of the nRT preferentially project to the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN), and modulate visual information transmission and gamma activity in primary visual cortex (V1). These findings pinpoint the SST neurons in nRT as powerful modulators of the visual information encoding accuracy in V1, and represent a novel circuit through which the nRT can influence representation of visual information.
Data availability
All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Source data for all figures are available in a spreadsheet format.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NS096369)
- Jeanne T Paz
National Science Foundation (1822598)
- Michael P Stryker
National Institute for Health Research (EY025174)
- Michael P Stryker
American Epilepsy Society
- Bryan Higashikubo
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (F31NA111819)
- Frances S Cho
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: We performed all experiments in compliance with protocols approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees at the University of California, San Francisco and Gladstone Institutes (protocol numbers AN180588-02C and AN174396-03E). Precautions were taken to minimize stress and the number of animals used in all experiments. We followed the NIH guidelines for rigor and reproducibility of the research.
Copyright
© 2021, Hoseini 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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