Submitted on August 29, 2006
Accepted on January 19, 2007
CONTEXTUAL INTERACTION OF GABAergic CIRCUITRY WITH DYNAMIC SYNAPSES
Reza Khanbabaie1, Alireza S Mahani1, and Ralf Wessel1*
1 Physics, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, United States
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: rw{at}physics.wustl.edu.
Visual context shapes human perception, yet our understanding of this phenomenon in terms of synaptic circuitry is still rudimentary. Our in vitro experiments with avian tectum reveal two distinct GABAergic pathways that mediate the spatiotemporal tectal interaction of retinal inputs. One pathway mediates postsynaptic lateral inhibition. The other pathway interacts with the synaptic depression of retinotectal synapses. Simulations of an experimentally constrained model including the two pathways reproduce the observed avian tectum wide-field neuron's sensitivity to small and moving stimuli, while being insensitive to whole-field motion.
