Synaptic plasticity can produce and enhance direction selectivity.

ABSTRACT: The discrimination of the direction of movement of sensory images is critical to the control of many animal behaviors. We propose a parsimonious model of motion processing that generates direction selective responses using short-term synaptic depression and can reproduce salient features of direction selectivity found in a population of neurons in the midbrain of the weakly electric fish Eigenmannia virescens. The model achieves direction selectivity with an elementary Reichardt motion detector: information from spatially separated receptive fields converges onto a neuron via dynamically different pathways. In the model, these differences arise from convergence of information through distinct synapses that either exhibit or do not exhibit short-term synaptic depression--short-term depressi

SUBMITTER: Carver S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2242823 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature