Stimulus specificity of cortico-cortical connections optimizes information transmission
Neurons in visual cortex receive most inputs from other cortical neurons with similar stimulus preference. To understand the role of this arrangement in information transmission we use a computational model to quantify the information about external stimuli that a typical cortical neuron receives through its cortico-cortical synapses. We find that efficient readout of the information encoded by an afferent population with orientation tuning similar to that observed in area V1 requires the spread of orientation preferences of excitatory cortical afferents to take a value in agreement with experiments. We suggest that the organization of V1 cortico-cortical synapses allows efficient information transmission.
visual cortex population coding cortical synapses