Sparse thalamocortical convergence

Abstract

How many thalamic neurons converge onto a cortical cell? This is an important question, because the organization of thalamocortical projections can influence the cortical architecture.^1,2 Here, we estimate the degree of thalamocortical convergence in primary visual cortex by taking advantage of the cortical expansion-neurons within a restricted volume in primary visual cortex have overlapping receptive fields driven by a smaller set of inputs from the lateral geniculate nucleus.^3-5 Under these conditions, the measurements of cortical receptive fields in a population can be used to infer the receptive fields of their geniculate inputs and the weights of their projections using non-negative matrix factorization.⁶ The analysis reveals sparse connectivity,⁷ where a handful (~2-6) of thalamic inputs account for 90% of the total synaptic weight to a cortical neuron. Together with previous findings,⁸ these results paint a picture consistent with the idea that convergence of a few inputs partly determine the retinotopy and tuning properties of cortical cells.^8-13.

Keywords: receptive fields, retinotopy, primary visual cortex, mouse, thalamocortical, connectivity, feed-forward, model, population.