A method to estimate the number of neurons supporting visual orientation discrimination in primates [version 1; referees: 2 approved]

F1000Research

Ingmar Kanitscheider¹  Ruben Coen-Cagli²  Alexandre Pouget³ 

[1] Center of Learning and Memory and Department of Neuroscience, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA;Department of Neuroscience, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York City, NY, USA;Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London, London, UK;

关键词: Methods for Diagnostic & Therapeutic Studies;    Neuro-Ophthalmology & Neuro-Otology;   

DOI  :  10.12688/f1000research.12398.1

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

In this method article, we show how to estimate of the number of retinal ganglion cells (RGC), and the number of lateral genicular nucleus (LGN) and primary visual cortex (V1) neurons involved in visual orientation discrimination tasks. We reported the results of this calculation in Kanitscheider et al. (2015), where we were interested in comparing the number of neurons in the visual periphery versus visual cortex for a specific experiment. This calculation allows estimation of the information content at different stages of the visual pathway, which can be used to assess the efficiency of the computations performed. As these numbers are generally not readily available but may be useful to other researchers, we explain here in detail how we obtained them. The calculation is straightforward, and simply requires combining anatomical and physiological information about the macaque visual pathway. Similar information could be used to repeat the calculation for other species or modalities.

【 授权许可】

Unknown