Laminar variation in threshold for detection of electrical excitation of striate cortex by macaques

Macaques were trained to signal their detection of electrical stimulation applied by a movable microelectrode to perifoveal striate cortex. Trains of < or =100 cathodal, 0.2-ms, constant current pulses were delivered at 50 or 100 Hz. The minimum current that could be reliably detected was measured at successive depths along radial electrode penetrations through the cortex. The lowest detection thresholds were routinely encountered when the stimulation was applied to layer 3, particularly just at the juncture between layers 3 and 4A. On the average, there was a twofold variation in threshold along the penetrations, with the highest intracortical thresholds being in layers 4C and 6. Variations as high as 20-fold were obtained in some individual penetrations, whereas relatively little change was observed in others. The minimum detectable current was 1 muA at a site in layer 3, i.e., 10-100 times lower than that for surface stimulation. Because macaques, as do human subjects, find electrical stimulation of striate cortex to be highly similar at all loci (a phosphene in the human case), it is puzzling as to how such uniformity of effect evolves from the exceedingly intricate circuitry available to the effective stimuli. It is hypothesized that the stimulus captures the most excitable elements, which then suppress other functional moieties, producing only the luminance of the phosphene. Lowest thresholds presumably are encountered when the electrode lies among these excitable elements that can, with higher currents, be stimulated directly from some distance or indirectly by the horizontal bands of myelinated axons, the stria of Baillarger.