PUBLICATION

Rapid mapping of visual receptive fields by filtered back projection: application to multi-neuronal electrophysiology and imaging

Authors
Johnston, J., Ding, H., Seibel, S.H., Esposti, F., Lagnado, L.
ID
ZDB-PUB-161006-1
Date
2014
Source
The Journal of physiology   592: 4839-54 (Journal)
Registered Authors
Lagnado, Leon
Keywords
none
MeSH Terms
  • Action Potentials
  • Algorithms
  • Animals
  • Brain Mapping/methods*
  • Retinal Neurons/physiology*
  • Synapses/physiology
  • Visual Fields*
  • Visual Pathways/physiology
  • Zebrafish
PubMed
25172952 Full text @ J. Physiol.
Abstract
Neurons in the visual system vary widely in the spatiotemporal properties of their receptive fields (RFs), and understanding these variations is key to elucidating how visual information is processed. We present a new approach for mapping RFs based on the filtered back projection (FBP), an algorithm used for tomographic reconstructions. To estimate RFs, a series of bars were flashed across the retina at pseudo-random positions and at a minimum of five orientations. We apply this method to retinal neurons and show that it can accurately recover the spatial RF and impulse response of ganglion cells recorded on a multi-electrode array. We also demonstrate its utility for in vivo imaging by mapping the RFs of an array of bipolar cell synapses expressing a genetically encoded Ca(2+) indicator. We find that FBP offers several advantages over the commonly used spike-triggered average (STA): (i) ON and OFF components of a RF can be separated; (ii) the impulse response can be reconstructed at sample rates of 125 Hz, rather than the refresh rate of a monitor; (iii) FBP reveals the response properties of neurons that are not evident using STA, including those that display orientation selectivity, or fire at low mean spike rates; and (iv) the FBP method is fast, allowing the RFs of all the bipolar cell synaptic terminals in a field of view to be reconstructed in under 4 min. Use of the FBP will benefit investigations of the visual system that employ electrophysiology or optical reporters to measure activity across populations of neurons.
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Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
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Mapping