A shrewd insight for vision

Abstract

The circuitry responsible for generating orientation-specific responses in primary visual cortex remains controversial. A new study identifies an anatomical substrate for orientation selectivity and suggests the mechanism may be conserved across species.

Figure 1

Schematic diagram illustrating cortical circuits reported by Mooser et al.. The orientation map in cortical layer 2/3 is constructed by combining optical imaging responses to stimuli presented at various orientations, coded in different colors (upper right). Anatomical tracing experiments suggest that orientation tuning in layer 2/3 could arise from input from a group of layer 4 neurons whose receptive fields and cell bodies are arranged in a line (adapted from ref. 15).