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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 31, 2025

A Guide to In vivo Single-unit Recording from Optogenetically Identified Cortical Inhibitory Interneurons

A Guide to In vivo Single-unit Recording from Optogenetically Identified Cortical Inhibitory Interneurons

Published on: November 7, 2014

VIP interneurons regulate cortical size tuning and visual perception.

Katie A Ferguson¹, Jenna Salameh¹, Christopher Alba¹

¹Department of Neuroscience, Kavli Institute for Neuroscience, Wu Tsai Institute, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510 USA.

Biorxiv : the Preprint Server for Biology

|May 10, 2023

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Vasoactive intestinal peptide interneurons (VIP-INs) regulate cortical circuits and sensory perception. Disrupting VIP-INs impacts visual feature selectivity and perceptual behavior, especially for small visual cues.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Cortical Circuitry
Sensory Processing

Background:

Local cortical circuits rely on diverse GABAergic interneurons for regulation.
Inhibitory-to-inhibitory interactions are crucial for circuit function during different behavioral states.
Vasoactive intestinal peptide-expressing interneurons (VIP-INs) are activated during arousal and modulate local circuits.

Approach:

Utilized cellular imaging, manipulation (short and long-term), and perceptual behavior tasks in awake mice.
Investigated the impact of VIP-INs on somatostatin-expressing interneurons (SST-INs) and pyramidal neurons (PNs) in the primary visual cortex.
Examined how VIP-IN activity influences visual feature selectivity and perceptual performance.

Key Points:

Loss of VIP-IN activity altered behavioral state-dependent modulation of SST-INs, but not PNs.
Reduced VIP-IN activity disrupted visual feature selectivity for stimulus size in both SST-INs and PNs.
VIP-INs directly shape GABAergic interneuron selectivity for sensory stimuli through inhibitory-to-inhibitory interactions.

Conclusions:

VIP-INs play a critical role in modulating cortical circuit activity based on behavioral state.
VIP-INs contribute to sensory context-dependent perceptual performance, with a greater impact on small visual cues.
Inhibitory-to-inhibitory interactions mediated by VIP-INs are essential for fine-tuning sensory information processing and perception.