Survey of spiking in the mouse visual system reveals functional hierarchy.
Nature 2021;
592:86-92. [PMID:
33473216 PMCID:
PMC10399640 DOI:
10.1038/s41586-020-03171-x]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 148] [Impact Index Per Article: 49.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/23/2019] [Accepted: 12/09/2020] [Indexed: 12/14/2022]
Abstract
The anatomy of the mammalian visual system, from the retina to the neocortex, is organized hierarchically1. However, direct observation of cellular-level functional interactions across this hierarchy is lacking due to the challenge of simultaneously recording activity across numerous regions. Here we describe a large, open dataset-part of the Allen Brain Observatory2-that surveys spiking from tens of thousands of units in six cortical and two thalamic regions in the brains of mice responding to a battery of visual stimuli. Using cross-correlation analysis, we reveal that the organization of inter-area functional connectivity during visual stimulation mirrors the anatomical hierarchy from the Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas3. We find that four classical hierarchical measures-response latency, receptive-field size, phase-locking to drifting gratings and response decay timescale-are all correlated with the hierarchy. Moreover, recordings obtained during a visual task reveal that the correlation between neural activity and behavioural choice also increases along the hierarchy. Our study provides a foundation for understanding coding and signal propagation across hierarchically organized cortical and thalamic visual areas.
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