The responses of the cortex to sensory stimulation seem to rely on a balance between excitation and inhibition. Previous studies of such responses have largely used anaesthetized animals; now, Haider et al. report that recordings of visually evoked responses from the cortex of awake mice show much greater levels of widespread inhibition, resulting in more spatially selective and short-lived cortical responses to sensory stimulation than are seen in anaesthetized animals. This synaptic inhibition might be modulated by attention or reward-related factors to influence visual processing.
ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER
Haider, B., Häuser, M. & Carandini, M. Inhibition dominates sensory responses in the awake cortex. Nature 21 Nov 2012 (doi:10.1038/nature11665)
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Jones, R. Inhibition in the awake cortex. Nat Rev Neurosci 14, 2 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3413
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3413