The spatial organization and dynamic interactions between excitatory and inhibitory synaptic inputs that define the receptive field (RF) of simple cells in the cat primary visual cortex (V1) still raise the following paradoxical issues: (1) stimulation of simple cells in V1 with drifting gratings supports a wiring schema of spatially segregated sets of excitatory and inhibitory inputs activated in an opponent way by stimulus contrast polarity and (2) in contrast, intracellular studies using flashed bars suggest that although ON and OFF excitatory inputs are indeed segregated, inhibitory inputs span the entire RF regardless of input contrast polarity. Here, we propose a biologically detailed computational model of simple cells embedded in a V1-like network that resolves this seeming contradiction. We varied parametrically the RF-correlation-based bias for excitatory and inhibitory synapses and found that a moderate bias of excitatory neurons to synapse onto other neurons with correlated receptive fields and a weaker bias of inhibitory neurons to synapse onto other neurons with anticorrelated receptive fields can explain the conductance input, the postsynaptic membrane potential, and the spike train dynamics under both stimulation paradigms. This computational study shows that the same structural model can reproduce the functional diversity of visual processing observed during different visual contexts.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Identifying generic connectivity motives in cortical circuitry encoding for specific functions is crucial for understanding the computations implemented in the cortex. Indirect evidence points to correlation-based biases in the connectivity pattern in V1 of higher mammals, whereby excitatory and inhibitory neurons preferentially synapse onto neurons respectively with correlated and anticorrelated receptive fields. A recent intracellular study questions this push–pull hypothesis, failing to find spatial anticorrelation patterns between excitation and inhibition across the receptive field. We present here a spiking model of V1 that integrates relevant anatomic and physiological constraints and shows that a more versatile motif of correlation-based connectivity with selectively tuned excitation and broadened inhibition is sufficient to account for the diversity of functional descriptions obtained for different classes of stimuli.

定义猫初级视觉皮层 (V1) 中简单细胞的感受野 (RF) 的兴奋性和抑制性突触输入之间的空间组织和动态相互作用仍然引发以下矛盾问题：(1) V1 中简单细胞的漂移刺激光栅支持通过刺激对比极性以相反方式激活的一组空间隔离的兴奋性和抑制性输入的接线模式，并且 (2) 相反，使用闪烁条的细胞内研究表明，虽然 ON 和 OFF 兴奋性输入确实是隔离的，但抑制性输入跨度无论输入对比度极性如何，整个射频。在这里，我们提出了一个嵌入在类似 V1 的网络中的简单细胞的生物学详细计算模型，该模型解决了这个看似矛盾的问题。我们参数化地改变了兴奋性和抑制性突触的基于 RF 相关性的偏差，发现兴奋性神经元与具有相关感受野的其他神经元突触的适度偏差和抑制性神经元与具有反相关感受野的其他神经元突触的较弱偏差可以解释两种刺激范式下的电导输入、突触后膜电位和尖峰列车动力学。这项计算研究表明，相同的结构模型可以重现在不同视觉环境中观察到的视觉处理的功能多样性。

意义声明识别特定功能的皮层电路编码中的通用连接动机对于理解在皮层中实现的计算至关重要。间接证据表明，高等哺乳动物 V1 的连接模式存在基于相关性的偏差，其中兴奋性和抑制性神经元优先突触到分别具有相关和反相关感受野的神经元上。最近的一项细胞内研究质疑这种推拉假设，未能找到整个感受野的兴奋和抑制之间的空间反相关模式。