Lab Seminar
| Date | 09.09.2014 14:00~15:00 |
|---|---|
| Location | Seminar Room , 1st floor, Myodaiji NIPS |
| Orator | Seung-Hee Lee, PhD（Division of Neurobiology, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA Department of Biological Sciences, Korea Advanced Institute ） |
| Title | Interneuron subtypes and orientation tuning |
| Contents | Parvalbumin-positive (PV+) and somatostatin-positive (SST+) interneurons are two principal subtypes of cortical GABAergic neurons that differ in morphology, physiological properties and postsynaptic targeting. Although GABAergic inhibition is known to be crucial for shaping orientation tuning in the visual cortex, it is unclear whether PV+ and SST+ interneurons have different roles. Recently, we addressed this issue by optogenetically manipulating each interneuron subtype. We found that PV+ and SST+ interneurons show distinct roles in orientation selectivity, depending on the level and duration of interneuron activation. Our results showed that prolonged activation of PV+ interneurons in the mouse primary visual cortex (V1) sharpens neuronal feature selectivity and improves perceptual discrimination. These results provide the first demonstration that visual coding and perception can be improved by increased spiking of a specific subtype of cortical inhibitory interneurons. Key words: Orientation selectivity, interneuron, primary visual cortex |
