The brain adapts to the sensory environment. For example, simple sensory exposure can modify the response properties of early sensory neurons. How these changes affect the overall encoding and maintenance of stimulus information across neuronal populations remains unclear. We perform parallel recordings in the primary visual cortex of anesthetized cats and find that brief, repetitive exposure to structured visual stimuli enhances stimulus encoding by decreasing the selectivity and increasing the range of the neuronal responses that persist after stimulus presentation. Low-dimensional projection methods and simple classifiers demonstrate that visual exposure increases the segregation of persistent neuronal population responses into stimulus-specific clusters. These observed refinements preserve the representational details required for stimulus reconstruction and are detectable in postexposure spontaneous activity. Assuming response facilitation and recurrent network interactions as the core mechanisms underlying stimulus persistence, we show that the exposure-driven segregation of stimulus responses can arise through strictly local plasticity mechanisms, also in the absence of firing rate changes. Our findings provide evidence for the existence of an automatic, unguided optimization process that enhances the encoding power of neuronal populations in early visual cortex, thus potentially benefiting simple readouts at higher stages of visual processing.

大脑适应感官环境。例如，简单的感觉暴露可以改变早期感觉神经元的反应特性。这些变化如何影响神经元群中刺激信息的整体编码和维护尚不清楚。我们在麻醉猫的初级视觉皮层中进行平行录音，发现短暂、重复地暴露于结构化视觉刺激可通过降低选择性和增加刺激呈现后持续存在的神经元反应范围来增强刺激编码。低维投影方法和简单的分类器表明，视觉暴露增加了持久性神经元群反应分离成刺激特定簇的程度。这些观察到的改进保留了刺激重建所需的代表性细节，并且可以在暴露后的自发活动中检测到。假设反应促进和循环网络相互作用是刺激持久性的核心机制，我们表明暴露驱动的刺激反应分离可以通过严格的局部可塑性机制产生，即使在没有放电率变化的情况下。我们的研究结果为存在一种自动的、无指导的优化过程提供了证据，该过程增强了早期视觉皮层神经元群的编码能力，从而可能有利于视觉处理更高阶段的简单读数。假设反应促进和循环网络相互作用是刺激持久性的核心机制，我们表明暴露驱动的刺激反应分离可以通过严格的局部可塑性机制产生，即使在没有放电率变化的情况下。我们的研究结果为存在一种自动的、无指导的优化过程提供了证据，该过程增强了早期视觉皮层神经元群的编码能力，从而可能有利于视觉处理更高阶段的简单读数。假设反应促进和循环网络相互作用是刺激持久性的核心机制，我们表明暴露驱动的刺激反应分离可以通过严格的局部可塑性机制产生，即使在没有放电率变化的情况下。我们的研究结果为存在一种自动的、无指导的优化过程提供了证据，该过程增强了早期视觉皮层神经元群的编码能力，从而可能有利于视觉处理更高阶段的简单读数。