Faculty of 1000 Biology | Linearity of cortical receptive fields measured with natural sounds.

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12-Aug-2005

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Linearity of cortical receptive fields measured with natural sounds.
Machens CK, Wehr MS, Zador AM
J Neurosci 2004 Feb 4 24(5):1089-100 [abstract on PubMed] [related articles] [order article]

Selected by | Bruno Olshausen
Evaluated 27 Feb 2004

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Bruno Olshausen
University of California, Davis, United States of America
NEUROSCIENCE

New Finding

Shows that for many layer 2/3 auditory cortical neurons (area A1), a linear receptive field model does a poor job accounting for the membrane voltage fluctuations in response to natural sounds. In other words, one can not tell from looking at the spectro-temporal receptive field of a neuron how it will respond to complex, natural sounds. These results have profound implications for how we think about sensory coding in the cortex, because the classical notion of the "receptive field" - in which the neuron's response is modeled as a function of the stimulus - appears to have little utility in accounting for neural response properties under realistic - i.e. ecologically valid - conditions. Understanding the behavior of cortical neurons may well require simultaneously recording from many locally inter-connected neurons in order to observe their interactions.

Evaluated 27 Feb 2004

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Faculty of 1000: evaluations for Machens CK et al J Neurosci 2004 Feb 4 24 (5) :1089-100 http://www.f1000biology.com/article/14762127/evaluation

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Bruno Olshausen: Faculty of 1000, 27 Feb 2004 http://www.f1000biology.com/article/14762127/evaluation

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