Activation of Specific Interneurons Improves V1 Feature Selectivity and Visual Perception

Inhibitory interneurons are essential components of the neural circuits underlying various brain functions. In the neocortex, a large diversity of GABAergic interneurons have been identified based on their morphology, molecular markers, biophysical properties, and innervation pattern(1,2,3). However, how the activity of each subtype of interneurons contributes to sensory processing remains unclear. Here we show that optogenetic activation of parvalbumin-positive (PV+) interneurons in mouse V1 sharpens neuronal feature selectivity and improves perceptual discrimination. Using multichannel recording with silicon probes(4,5) and channelrhodopsin 2 (ChR2)-mediated optical activation(6), we found that elevated spiking of PV+ interneurons markedly sharpened orientation tuning and enhanced direction selectivity of nearby neurons. These effects were caused by the activation of inhibitory neurons rather than decreased spiking of excitatory neurons, since archaerhodopsin-3 (Arch)-mediated optical silencing(7) of calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase IIα-positive (CaMKIIα+) excitatory neurons caused no significant change in V1 stimulus selectivity. Moreover, the improved selectivity specifically required PV+ neuron activation, since activating somatostatin (SOM+) or vasointestinal peptide (VIP+) interneurons had no significant effect. Notably, PV+ neuron activation in awake mice caused a significant improvement in their orientation discrimination, mirroring the sharpened V1 orientation tuning. Together, these results provide the first demonstration that visual coding and perception can be improved by elevated spiking of a specific subtype of cortical inhibitory interneurons.