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INVITED REVIEW

Thalamocortical Specificity and the Synthesis of Sensory Cortical Receptive Fields

¹Department of Biological Sciences, State University of New York—State College of Optometry, New York, New York; and ²Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut

Submitted 15 December 2004; accepted in final form 11 February 2005

ABSTRACT

A persistent and fundamental question in sensory cortical physiology concerns the manner in which receptive fields of layer-4 neurons are synthesized from their thalamic inputs. According to a hierarchical model proposed more than 40 years ago, simple receptive fields in layer 4 of primary visual cortex originate from the convergence of highly specific thalamocortical inputs (e.g., geniculate inputs with ON-center receptive fields overlap the ON subregions of layer 4 simple cells). Here, we summarize studies in the visual cortex that provide support for this high specificity of thalamic input to visual cortical simple cells. In addition, we review studies of GABAergic interneurons in the somatosensory "barrel" cortex with receptive fields that are generated by a very different mechanism: the nonspecific convergence of thalamic inputs with different response properties. We hypothesize that these 2 modes of thalamocortical connectivity onto subpopulations of excitatory and inhibitory neurons constitute a general feature of sensory neocortex and account for much of the diversity seen in layer-4 receptive fields.

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