Gregory D. Horwitz

Selective and Quickly Reversible Inactivation of Mammalian Neurons In Vivo Using the Drosophila Allatostatin Receptor

Genetic strategies for perturbing activity of selected neurons hold great promise for understanding circuitry and behavior. Several such strategies exist, but there has been no direct demonstration of reversible inactivation of mammalian neurons in vivo. We previously reported quickly reversible inactivation of neurons in vitro using expression of the Drosophila allatostatin receptor (AlstR). Here, adeno-associated viral vectors are used to express AlstR in vivo in cortical and thalamic neurons of rats, ferrets, and monkeys. Application of the receptors ligand, allatostatin (AL), leads to a dramatic reduction in neural activity, including responses of visual neurons to optimized visual stimuli. Additionally, AL eliminates activity in spinal cords of transgenic mice conditionally expressing AlstR. This reduction occurs selectively in AlstR-expressing neurons. Inactivation can be reversed within minutes upon washout of the ligand and is repeatable, demonstrating that the AlstR/AL system is effective for selective, quick, and reversible silencing of mammalian neurons in vivo.

Advances in Color Science: From Retina to Behavior

Color has become a premier model system for understanding how information is processed by neural circuits, and for investigating the relationships among genes, neural circuits, and perception. Both the physical stimulus for color and the perceptual output experienced as color are quite well characterized, but the neural mechanisms that underlie the transformation from stimulus to perception are incompletely understood. The past several years have seen important scientific and technical advances that are changing our understanding of these mechanisms. Here, and in the accompanying minisymposium, we review the latest findings and hypotheses regarding color computations in the retina, primary visual cortex, and higher-order visual areas, focusing on non-human primates, a model of human color vision.

Saccadic eye movements evoked by optogenetic activation of primate V1

Optogenetics has advanced our understanding of the neural basis of simple behaviors in rodents and small animals. In primates, however, for which more sophisticated behavioral assays exist, optogenetic manipulations of behavior have been unsuccessful. We found that monkeys reliably shifted their gaze toward the receptive field of optically driven channelrhodopsin-2–expressing neurons of the primary visual cortex. This result establishes optogenetics as a viable tool for the causal analysis of behavior in primate brain.

Nonlinear analysis of macaque V1 color tuning reveals cardinal directions for cortical color processing

Understanding color vision requires knowing how signals from the three classes of cone photoreceptor are combined in the cortex. We recorded from individual neurons in the primary visual cortex (V1) of awake monkeys while an automated, closed-loop system identified stimuli that differed in cone contrast but evoked the same response. We found that isoresponse surfaces for half the neurons were planar, which is consistent with linear processing. The remaining isoresponse surfaces were nonplanar. Some were cup-shaped, indicating sensitivity to only a narrow region of color space. Others were ellipsoidal, indicating sensitivity to all color directions. The major and minor axes of these nonplanar surfaces were often aligned to a set of three color directions that were previously identified in perceptual experiments. These results suggest that many V1 neurons combine cone signals nonlinearly and provide a new framework in which to decipher color processing in V1.

Effects of microsaccades on contrast detection and V1 responses in macaques

Microsaccades can elevate contrast detection thresholds of human observers and modulate the activity of neurons in monkey visual cortex. Whether microsaccades elevate contrast detection thresholds in monkey observers is not known and bears on the interpretation of neurophysiological experiments. To answer this question, we trained two monkeys to perform a 2AFC contrast detection task. Performance was worse on trials in which a microsaccade occurred during the stimulus presentation. The magnitude of the effect was modest (threshold changes of <0.2 log unit) and color specific: achromatic sensitivity was impaired, but red-green sensitivity was not. To explore the neural basis of this effect, we recorded the responses of individual V1 neurons to a white noise stimulus. Microsaccades produced a suppression of spiking activity followed by an excitatory rebound that was similar for L - M cone-opponent and L + M nonopponent V1 neurons. We conclude that microsaccades in the monkey increase luminance contrast detection thresholds and modulate the spiking activity of V1 neurons, but the luminance specificity of the behavioral suppression is likely implemented downstream of V1.

Paucity of chromatic linear motion detectors in macaque V1

The motion of a color-defined edge is often more difficult to perceive than the motion of a luminance-defined edge. Neurons subserving motion vision may therefore be particularly sensitive to luminance contrast. One class of neurons thought to play a critical role in motion perception is V1 neurons whose spatiotemporal receptive fields are oriented in space-time. We used the reverse correlation technique to study the relationship between color tuning and space-time receptive field orientation in V1 neurons of awake, fixating monkeys. Neurons with space-time oriented receptive fields were tuned almost exclusively for luminance, whereas neurons with nonoriented space-time receptive fields were tuned for luminance or for color. These results suggest that the special role of luminance contrast in motion perception is due in part to the establishment of space-time oriented receptive fields among luminance-tuned, but not color-tuned, V1 neurons.

A Comparison of Spiking Statistics in Motion Sensing Neurones of Flies and Monkeys

The information processing strategies employed by the brain are constrained by the reliability with which individual neurones encode external stimuli. If repeated presentations of a particular stimulus elicit extremely reliable responses, relatively few neurones are needed to provide an adequate representation of the stimulus. If, on the other hand, responses are highly variable, more neurones and additional processing stages (e.g. averaging) may be necessary to encode the stimulus with equal precision. In their article in this volume, Warzecha and Egelhaaf conclude provocatively that the motion sensing neurone, Hl, of the fly responds to stimuli with considerable reliability, a finding that stands in contrast to the highly variable responses of motion sensing neurones in the middle temporal visual area (MT) of the monkey cerebral cortex. This difference may make a great deal of sense. Invertebrate nervous systems contain far fewer neurones than those of vertebrates; accurate representation of the sensory world with a relatively small number of neurones may therefore be of great importance to invertebrates. Vertebrate nervous systems, on the other hand, may sacrifice fidelity at the single neurone level to obtain the increased computational power afforded by a more densely interconnected nervous system. Because of the explosion of neurone number in the vertebrate central nervous system, fidelity sacrificed at the single neurone level may be preserved by redundant representation and signal averaging (Buracas et al. 1998; Shadlen and Newsome 1998).

Object-centered shifts of receptive field positions in monkey primary visual cortex.

Stimuli that project the same retinal visual angle can appear to occupy very different proportions of the visual field if they are perceived to be at different distances [1-8]. Previous research shows that perceived angular size alters the spatial distribution of activity in early retinotopic visual cortex [7, 9-11]. For example, a sphere superimposed on the far end of a corridor scene appears to occupy a larger visual angle and activates a larger region of primary visual cortex (V1) compared with the same sphere superimposed on the near end of the corridor [7]. These previous results, however, were obtained from human subjects using psychophysics and fMRI, a fact that fundamentally limits our understanding of the underlying neuronal mechanisms. Here, we present an animal model that allows for a finer examination of size perception at the level of single neurons. We first show that macaque monkeys perceive a size-distance illusion similarly to humans. Then, using extracellular recordings, we test the specific hypothesis [12] that neurons in V1 shift the position of their receptive fields (RFs) in response to complex monocular depth cues. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found that when ring-shaped stimuli appeared at the back of the corridor, RFs of V1 neurons shifted toward the center of the rings. When the same stimuli appeared at the front of the corridor, RFs shifted outward. Thus, our results show for the first time that V1 RFs can shift, potentially serving as the neural basis for the perception of angular size.

Direction-selective visual responses in macaque superior colliculus induced by behavioral training

In a previous report, we described a heretofore undetected population of neurons in the intermediate and deep layers of the monkey superior colliculus (SC) that yielded directionally selective visual responses to stimuli presented within the central 4 degrees of the visual field. We observed these neurons in three monkeys that had been extensively trained to perform a visual direction discrimination task in this region of the visual field. The task required the monkeys to report the perceived direction of motion by making a saccadic eye movement to one of two targets aligned with the two possible directions of motion. We hypothesized that these neurons reflect a learned association between visual motion direction and saccade direction formed through extensive training on the direction discrimination task. We tested this hypothesis by searching for direction-selective visual responses in two monkeys that had been trained to perform a similar motion discrimination task in which the direction of stimulus motion was dissociated from the direction of the operant saccade. Strongly directional visual responses were absent in these monkeys, consistent with the notion that extensive training can induce highly specific visual responses in a subpopulation of SC neurons.

Compensation of white for macular filtering

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