Emergence of binocular functional properties in a monocular neural circuit
- 10 August 2008
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Nature Neuroscience
- Vol. 11 (9), 1083-1090
- https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2166
Abstract
To better understand the development of the binocular circuit and the nature of visual information processing, Ramdya and Engert examine the neuronal activity of zebrafish optic tectum when it was rewired to receive inputs from both eyes. Sensory circuits frequently integrate converging inputs while maintaining precise functional relationships between them. For example, in mammals with stereopsis, neurons at the first stages of binocular visual processing show a close alignment of receptive-field properties for each eye. Still, basic questions about the global wiring mechanisms that enable this functional alignment remain unanswered, including whether the addition of a second retinal input to an otherwise monocular neural circuit is sufficient for the emergence of these binocular properties. We addressed this question by inducing a de novo binocular retinal projection to the larval zebrafish optic tectum and examining recipient neuronal populations using in vivo two-photon calcium imaging. Notably, neurons in rewired tecta were predominantly binocular and showed matching direction selectivity for each eye. We found that a model based on local inhibitory circuitry that computes direction selectivity using the topographic structure of both retinal inputs can account for the emergence of this binocular feature.Keywords
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