Horizontal connectivity in V1: Prediction of coherence in contour and motion integration.

This study demonstrates the functional importance of the Surround context relayed laterally in V1 by the horizontal connectivity, in controlling the latency and the gain of the cortical response to the feedforward visual drive. We report here four main findings: 1) a centripetal apparent motion sequence results in a shortening of the spiking latency of V1 cells, when the orientation of the local inducer and the global motion axis are both co-aligned with the RF orientation preference; 2) this contextual effects grows with visual flow speed, peaking at 150-250°/s when it matches the propagation speed of horizontal connectivity (0.15-0.

Elements of qualitative cognition: An information topology perspective.

Elementary quantitative and qualitative aspects of consciousness are investigated conjointly from the biology, neuroscience, physic and mathematic point of view, by the mean of a theory written with Bennequin that derives and extends information theory within algebraic topology. Information structures, that accounts for statistical dependencies within n-body interacting systems are interpreted a la Leibniz as a monadic-panpsychic framework where consciousness is information and physical, and arise from collective interactions. The electrodynamic intrinsic nature of consciousness, sustained by an analogical code, is illustrated by standard neuroscience and psychophysic results.

Neurotransmitter identity and electrophysiological phenotype are genetically coupled in midbrain dopaminergic neurons.

Most neuronal types have a well-identified electrical phenotype. It is now admitted that a same phenotype can be produced using multiple biophysical solutions defined by ion channel expression levels. This argues that systems-level approaches are necessary to understand electrical phenotype genesis and stability.

Animation of natural scene by virtual eye-movements evokes high precision and low noise in V1 neurons.

Synaptic noise is thought to be a limiting factor for computational efficiency in the brain. In visual cortex (V1), ongoing activity is present in vivo, and spiking responses to simple stimuli are highly unreliable across trials. Stimulus statistics used to plot receptive fields, however, are quite different from those experienced during natural visuomotor exploration.

[Multiscale functional imaging: reconstructing network dynamics from the synaptic echoes recorded in a single visual cortex neuron].

In vivo intracellular electrophysiology offers the unique possibility of listening to the "synaptic rumor " of the cortical network, captured by a recording electrode in a single V1 cell. It allows one to reconstruct the distribution of input sources in space and time, i.e.

Network-state modulation of power-law frequency-scaling in visual cortical neurons.

Various types of neural-based signals, such as EEG, local field potentials and intracellular synaptic potentials, integrate multiple sources of activity distributed across large assemblies. They have in common a power-law frequency-scaling structure at high frequencies, but it is still unclear whether this scaling property is dominated by intrinsic neuronal properties or by network activity. The latter case is particularly interesting because if frequency-scaling reflects the network state it could be used to characterize the functional impact of the connectivity.

Shunting inhibition, a silent step in visual cortical computation.

Brain computation, in the early visual system, is often considered as a hierarchical process in which features extracted in a given sensory relay are not present in previous stages of integration. In particular, orientation preference and its fine tuning selectivity are functional properties shared by most cortical cells and they are not observed at the preceding geniculate stage. A classical problem is identifying the mechanisms and circuitry underlying these computations.

Orientation and direction selectivity of synaptic inputs in visual cortical neurons: a diversity of combinations produces spike tuning.

This intracellular study investigates synaptic mechanisms of orientation and direction selectivity in cat area 17. Visually evoked inhibition was analyzed in 88 cells by detecting spike suppression, hyperpolarization, and reduction of trial-to-trial variability of membrane potential. In 25 of these cells, inhibition visibility was enhanced by depolarization and spike inactivation and by direct measurement of synaptic conductances.