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Dendritic asymmetry cannot account for directional responses of neurons in visual cortex

Nature Neuroscience volume 2, pages 820–824 (1999)Cite this article

Abstract

A simple model was proposed to account for the direction selectivity of neurons in the primary visual cortex, area V1. In this model, the temporal asymmetries in the summation of inhibition and excitation that produce directionality were generated by structural asymmetries in the tangential organization of the basal dendritic tree of cortical neurons. We reconstructed dendritic trees of neurons with known direction preferences and found no correlation between the small biases of a neuron's dendritic morphology and its direction preference. Detailed simulations indicated that even when the electrotonic asymmetries in the dendrites were extreme, as in cortical Meynert cells, the biophysical properties of single neurons could contribute only partially to the directionality of cortical neurons.

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Figure 1: Computing the dendritic bias.
Figure 2: Directionality and dendritic asymmetry.
Figure 3: Analysis of the relationship between directionality and dendritic bias.
Figure 4: .

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by an SNF SPP grant to K.A.C.M. and R.J. Douglas and grants to I.S. from the Israeli Academy of Science and the Office of Naval Research. We thank R.J.D. for contributions to the experiments and cell reconstructions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Neuroinformatics, University/ETHZ, Winterthurerstr.190, Zurich, 8057, Switzerland

    J. C. Anderson, T. Binzegger & K. A. C. Martin

  2. Institute of Life Science and Center of Neural Computation, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

    O. Kahana & I. Segev

Authors
  1. J. C. Anderson
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  2. T. Binzegger
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  3. O. Kahana
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  4. K. A. C. Martin
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Correspondence to K. A. C. Martin.

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Anderson, J., Binzegger, T., Kahana, O. et al. Dendritic asymmetry cannot account for directional responses of neurons in visual cortex. Nat Neurosci 2, 820–824 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/12194

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