Data from: Visual receptive field properties of neurons in the mouse lateral geniculate nucleus

The lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) is increasingly regarded as a
“smart-gating” operator for processing visual information. Therefore,
characterizing the response properties of LGN neurons will enable us to
better understand how neurons encode and transfer visual signals. Efforts
have been devoted to study its anatomical and functional features, and
recent advances have highlighted the existence in rodents of complex
features such as direction/orientation selectivity. However, unlike
well-researched higher-order mammals such as primates, the full array of
response characteristics vis-à-vis its morphological features have
remained relatively unexplored in the mouse LGN. To address the issue, we
recorded from mouse LGN neurons using multisite-electrode-arrays (MEAs)
and analysed their discharge patterns in relation to their location under
a series of visual stimulation paradigms. Several response properties
paralleled results from earlier studies in the field and these include
centre-surround organization, size of receptive field, spontaneous firing
rate and linearity of spatial summation. However, our results also
revealed “high-pass” and “low-pass” features in the temporal frequency
tuning of some cells, and greater average contrast gain than reported by
earlier studies. In addition, a small proportion of cells had
direction/orientation selectivity. Both “high-pass” and “low-pass” cells,
as well as direction and orientation selective cells, were found only in
small numbers, supporting the notion that these properties emerge in the
cortex. ON- and OFF-cells showed distinct contrast sensitivity and
temporal frequency tuning properties, suggesting parallel projections from
the retina. Incorporating a novel histological technique, we created a 3-D
LGN volume model explicitly capturing the morphological features of mouse
LGN and localising individual cells into anterior/middle/posterior LGN.
Based on this categorization, we show that the ON/OFF, DS/OS and linear
response properties are not regionally restricted. Our study confirms
earlier findings of spatial pattern selectivity in the LGN, and builds on
it to demonstrate that relatively elaborate features are computed early in
the visual pathway.