Abstract
We analysed evoked responses recorded from 97 cells in the visual cortex of 4 adult cats and 8 kittens, stimulated by a drifting sinusoidal grating. A Fourier analysis of the responses allowed us to select 30 cells showing a clear modulating response (relative modulation index > 1). The 162 records from these selected cells were scanned to detect precise temporal correlations in the form of replicating triplets and associated “ghost” doublets. Temporal correlations of this nature were observed in these cells. They are about 10 times more abundant in adult cats than in kittens, and mostly observed in infragranular cortical layer cells. The possible role of these precise temporal patterns in information processing in the brain is examined, as well as the relation between this type of temporal correlation with coherent oscillations and principal components waveforms.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abeles M, Gerstein GL (1988) Detecting spatiotemporal firing patterns among simultaneously recorded single neurones. J Neurophys 60:909–924
Damasio AR (1989) The brain binds entities and events by multiregional activation from convergence zones. Neural Comput 1:123–132
Eckhorn R, Bauer R, Jordan W, Brosh M, Kruse W, Munk M, Reiboeck HJ (1988) Coherent oscillations: a mechanism of feature linking in the visual cortex? Biol Cybern 60:121–130
Gary-Bobo E, Milleret C, Buisseret P (1986) Role of eye movements in developmental processes of orientation selectivity in the kitten visual cortex. Vision Res 26:557–567
Gray CM, Singer W (1987) Stimulus-specific neuronal oscillations in the cat visual cortex: a cortical functional unit. Proc Soc Neurosci 13:1449
Lestienne R, Strehler BL (1987a) The all-interval paradigm and analysis of the structure of neuronal spike trains. Proc Soc Neurosci 13:821
Lestienne R, Strehler BL (1987b) Time structure and stimulus dependence of precisely replicating patterns present in monkey cortical neuronal spike trains. Brain Res 437:214–238
Lestienne R, Strehler BL (1988) Differences between monkey visual cortex cells in triplet and ghost doublet informational symbols relationships. Biol Cybern 59:337–352
Lestienne R, Gary-Bobo E, Imbert M, Przybyslawski J (1988) Corrélations temporelles et codage de l'information dans le cortex visuel du chat (Temporal coding in the visual cortex of the cat) C R Acad Sci Paris III 307:511–516
Movshon JA, Thompson ID, Tolhurst DJ (1978) Spatial summation in the receptive field of simple cells in the cat striate cortex. J Physiol 283:53–77
Perkel DH, Bullock TH (1968) Neural coding. Neurosci Res Prog Bull 6:221–343
Perkel DH, Gerstein GL, Moore GP (1967) Neuronal spike trains and stochastic point processes. I. The single spike train. Biophys J 7:391–418
Richmond BJ, Optican LM, Podell M, Spitzer H (1987) Temporal encoding of two-dimensional patterns by single units in primate inferior temporal cortex. I. Response characteristics. J Neurophysiol 57:132–146
Richmond BJ, McClurkin JW, Gawne TJ, Optican LM (1988) Lateral geniculate nucleus neurons in awake behaving primates: II. Temporal modulation is more important in LGN neurons than ganglions cell fibers. Soc Neurosci 14:309
Rinzell J, Rall W (1974) Transient response in a dendritic neuron model for current injected at one branch. Biophys J 14:759–790
Strehler BL (1969) Information handling in the nervous system: an analogy to molecular genetic coder-decoder mechanism. Persp Biol Med 12:584–612
Strehler BL (1976) Molecular and systemic aspects of brain aging: psychobiology of informational redundancy. In: Terry R, Gershon S (eds) Neurobiology of aging. Raven Press, New York pp 281–311
Strehler BL, Lestienne R (1986) Evidence on precise time-coded symbols and memory of patterns in monkey cortical neuronal spike trains. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 83:9812–9816
Strehler BL, Lestienne R (1989) Presence of ghost doublets of coded neuronal patterns: relation to synaptic memory storage. Synapse 3:19–29
Von der Malsburg C, Bienenstock E (1987) A neural network for the retrieval of superimposed connection patterns. Europhys Lett 3:1243–1249
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lestienne, R., Gary-Bobo, E., Przybyslawski, J. et al. Temporal correlations in modulated evoked responses in the visual cortical cells of the cat. Biol. Cybern. 62, 425–440 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00197649
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00197649