[Combination of new electrophysiological and imaging techniques in the study of primary visual cortex function]

This work summarizes current research focused on explaining orientation selectivity of primary visual cortex (V1), and describes the electrophysiological and imaging techniques than are being used.

The study of orientation selectivity in V1 is key to understanding the cortical mechanisms implicated in the processing of sensory information, but this enterprise has proved more challenging than previously thought and there is no consensus about the best model to explain V1 neurons activity. Ongoing research is focused on determining the importance of the different inputs that a cortical cell receives (thalamic and lateral cortical inputs), and their link to cortical architecture. To achieve that, current research is combining optical imaging techniques with intracellular recordings of V1 neurons. Recent findings have found differences in the synaptic integration performed by neurons located in the iso orientation domains vs orientation centers of the functional V1 map.

Data describing synaptic activity combined with the cortical functional structure are yielding new clues about V1 computation, suggesting that there is more than one mechanism capable of generating orientation selectivity.