Cortical connectivity and sensory coding

摘要

The sensory cortex contains a wide array of neuronal types, which are connected together into complex but partially stereotyped circuits. Sensory stimuli trigger cascades of electrical activity through these circuits, causing specific features of sensory scenes to be encoded in the firing patterns of cortical populations. Recent research is beginning to reveal how the connectivity of individual neurons relates to the sensory features they encode, how differences in the connectivity patterns of different cortical cell classes enable them to encode information using different strategies, and how feedback connections from higher-order cortex allow sensory information to be integrated with behavioural context.%大规模活体记录工作已经揭示了关于皮层细胞群怎样编码感觉信息的很多奥秘，而在遗传学及circuit-mapping方面所取得的进展也使得对神经回路的识别、定性和控制成为可能。正如Kenneth Harris和Thomas Mrsic-Flogel在这篇Review文章中所反映的那样，这些方面的研究现在正在融合。这篇文章关注啮齿类动物的感觉皮层中的连接模式与神经元根据行为情况编码和整合信息的方式有何关系。