Neuron
Volume 104, Issue 2, 23 October 2019, Pages 402-411.e4
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Article
Synergistic Coding of Visual Information in Columnar Networks

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2019.07.006Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • Strong synergistic interactions underlie cortical computations in laminar circuits

  • Non-random clustering of synergistic interactions form synergy hubs

  • Synergistic interactions distributed uniformly throughout the cortical column

  • Stimulus-dependent correlations give rise to synergy in laminar cortical circuits

Summary

Incoming stimuli are encoded collectively by populations of cortical neurons, which transmit information by using a neural code thought to be predominantly redundant. Redundant coding is widely believed to reflect a design choice whereby neurons with overlapping receptive fields sample environmental stimuli to convey similar information. Here, we performed multi-electrode laminar recordings in awake monkey V1 to report significant synergistic interactions between nearby neurons within a cortical column. These interactions are clustered non-randomly across cortical layers to form synergy and redundancy hubs. Homogeneous sub-populations comprising synergy hubs decode stimulus information significantly better compared to redundancy hubs or heterogeneous sub-populations. Mechanistically, synergistic interactions emerge from the stimulus dependence of correlated activity between neurons. Our findings suggest a refinement of the prevailing ideas regarding coding schemes in sensory cortex: columnar populations can efficiently encode information due to synergistic interactions even when receptive fields overlap and shared noise between cells is high.

Keywords

synergy
redundancy
cortical columns
laminar recordings
information theory

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