|
| CAS Researchers Discover Mechanism in Neural Discrimination of Natural Stimuli |
| 2009-09-18 |
Chinese researchers made a discovery in the function of LGN (lateral geniculate nucleus) frequency tuning on neural discrimination of natural stimuli recently. Their research was published in the Journal of Neuroscience entitled "The spatiotemporal frequency tuning of LGN receptive field facilitates neural discrimination of natural stimuli" on September 9, 2009, .
Tan Zhongchao and Dr. Yao Haishan from Institute of Neuroscience of Shanghai Institutes of Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) conducted the research.
Theoretical studies suggest that the early visual system allows an efficient representation of natural stimuli. However, it is not clear whether the early visual processing can selectively amplify important signals in natural stimuli to facilitate discrimination.
Tan and Yao examined the functional role of LGN spatiotemporal frequency tuning in the processing of natural scenes. They found that LGN neurons exhibit inseparable spatiotemporal frequency tuning in a manner consistent with the feature of optimal filters that can maximize information transmission of natural scenes.
They also analyzed the spatiotemporal power spectrum of natural scenes and found that some frequencies exhibit larger variation in power across different scenes. Interestingly, the preferred frequency of ensemble LGN neurons matches the range of frequencies in which natural power spectrum varies most.
The researchers further showed that the match between LGN tuning and natural spectra variation enhances neural discrimination for natural stimuli. These results indicate thatthe spatiotemporal frequency characteristics of LGN neurons can facilitate neural discrimination of natural stimuli in addition to removing redundancy.
Paper Abstract: http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/29/36/11409 |
|
