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Mapping of the Receptive Fields in the Optic Tectum of Chicken (Gallus gallus) Using Sparse Noise

The optic tectum plays a key role in visual processing in birds. While the input from the retina is topographic in the superficial layers, the deep layers project to the thalamic nucleus rotundus in a functional topographical manner. Although the receptive fields of tectal neurons in birds have been...

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Autores principales: Verhaal, Josine, Luksch, Harald
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3620443/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23593310
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060782
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author Verhaal, Josine
Luksch, Harald
author_facet Verhaal, Josine
Luksch, Harald
author_sort Verhaal, Josine
collection PubMed
description The optic tectum plays a key role in visual processing in birds. While the input from the retina is topographic in the superficial layers, the deep layers project to the thalamic nucleus rotundus in a functional topographical manner. Although the receptive fields of tectal neurons in birds have been mapped before, a high resolution description of the white and black subfields of the receptive fields of tectal neurons is not available. We measured the receptive fields of neurons in the different layers of the tectum of anesthetized chickens with black and white stimuli that were flashed on a grey background in fast progression. Our results show that neurons in the deep layers of the optic tectum tend to respond stronger to black stimuli compared to white stimuli. In addition, the receptive field sizes are larger when measured using black stimuli than with white stimuli. While the black subfield was significantly larger than the white subfield for the intermediate and deep layers, no significant effects were found for the superficial layers. Finally, we investigated the optimal stimulus size in a subset of the neurons and found that these cells respond best to small white stimuli and to large black stimuli. In the majority of the cases the response was stronger to a large black bar than to a small white bar. We propose that such a stronger response to black stimuli might be advantageous for the detection of darker objects against the brighter sky.
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spelling pubmed-36204432013-04-16 Mapping of the Receptive Fields in the Optic Tectum of Chicken (Gallus gallus) Using Sparse Noise Verhaal, Josine Luksch, Harald PLoS One Research Article The optic tectum plays a key role in visual processing in birds. While the input from the retina is topographic in the superficial layers, the deep layers project to the thalamic nucleus rotundus in a functional topographical manner. Although the receptive fields of tectal neurons in birds have been mapped before, a high resolution description of the white and black subfields of the receptive fields of tectal neurons is not available. We measured the receptive fields of neurons in the different layers of the tectum of anesthetized chickens with black and white stimuli that were flashed on a grey background in fast progression. Our results show that neurons in the deep layers of the optic tectum tend to respond stronger to black stimuli compared to white stimuli. In addition, the receptive field sizes are larger when measured using black stimuli than with white stimuli. While the black subfield was significantly larger than the white subfield for the intermediate and deep layers, no significant effects were found for the superficial layers. Finally, we investigated the optimal stimulus size in a subset of the neurons and found that these cells respond best to small white stimuli and to large black stimuli. In the majority of the cases the response was stronger to a large black bar than to a small white bar. We propose that such a stronger response to black stimuli might be advantageous for the detection of darker objects against the brighter sky. Public Library of Science 2013-04-08 /pmc/articles/PMC3620443/ /pubmed/23593310 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060782 Text en © 2013 Verhaal, Luksch http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Verhaal, Josine
Luksch, Harald
Mapping of the Receptive Fields in the Optic Tectum of Chicken (Gallus gallus) Using Sparse Noise
title Mapping of the Receptive Fields in the Optic Tectum of Chicken (Gallus gallus) Using Sparse Noise
title_full Mapping of the Receptive Fields in the Optic Tectum of Chicken (Gallus gallus) Using Sparse Noise
title_fullStr Mapping of the Receptive Fields in the Optic Tectum of Chicken (Gallus gallus) Using Sparse Noise
title_full_unstemmed Mapping of the Receptive Fields in the Optic Tectum of Chicken (Gallus gallus) Using Sparse Noise
title_short Mapping of the Receptive Fields in the Optic Tectum of Chicken (Gallus gallus) Using Sparse Noise
title_sort mapping of the receptive fields in the optic tectum of chicken (gallus gallus) using sparse noise
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3620443/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23593310
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060782
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