Effects of sleep and arousal on the processing of visual information in the cat

Abstract

Single units in the cat lateral geniculate nucleus and primary visual cortex show changes in spontaneous and visually evoked firing as a function of the state of wakefulness. On arousal, spontaneous firing is smoother and often reduced and evoked responses are usually enhanced; this increases the signal-to-noise ratio. Single- and double-label 2-deoxyglucose autoradiographs show that slow-wave sleep differentially depresses visually evoked activity in the deeper layers of the visual cortex.