Applied Math Seminar

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Modeling the effect of spontaneous retinal waves on the development of receptive fields of neurons in primary visual cortex

Speaker: Jennifer Crodelle, Middlebury College

Location: Warren Weaver Hall 1314

Date: Friday, December 6, 2024, 11 a.m.

Synopsis:

Spontaneous waves are ubiquitous across many brain regions during early development. Activity from waves occurring in the retina are propagated to downstream areas, such as the thalamus and primary visual cortex, and are hypothesized to drive the development of receptive fields (RFs). Different stages of retinal spontaneous waves coincide with the development of the retinotopic map, ON-OFF segregation, and orientation selectivity in the early visual pathway of mammals. However, the mechanisms underlying the influence of such retinal waves on RF refinement are not well understood. In this work, we build a biologically-constrained mathematical model describing the development of the feed-forward RF of neurons in the primary visual cortex. These feed-forward synapses are driven by retinal waves using a spike-timing-dependent triplet plasticity rule. Using this model, we propose a possible mechanism underlying a pruning process leading to different RF spatial structures. In particular, we quantify how key characteristics of the retinal wave, such as wave speed and width, affect the simulated pruning result and shape of the receptive field. Through the derivation and analysis of a reduced rate model, we uncover mechanisms for the formation of a range of spatially structured RFs, including a periodic RF, which may help to understand related periodic RF development in other brain areas such as grid cells in the entorhinal cortex.