Functional bipartite invariance in mouse primary visual cortex receptive fields
Sensory systems support generalization by representing features that persist under input variation; however, identifying the neuronal basis of these invariances remains difficult due to high-dimensional and nonlinear neural computations. Here we leverage the inception loop paradigm, iterating between large-scale recordings, predictive models and in silico experiments with in vivo verification, to characterize neuronal invariances in mouse primary visual cortex (V1). We synthesize varied exciting inputs (VEIs), dissimilar images that drive target neurons. These VEIs revealed a new bipartite invariance: one subfield encodes a shift-tolerant high-frequency texture and the other encodes a fixed low-frequency pattern. This division aligns with object boundaries defined by spatial frequency differences in highly activating images, suggesting a contribution to segmentation. Analysis of the MICrONS dataset revealed a hierarchy of excitatory neurons in mouse V1 layers 2/3: postsynaptic neurons exhibited greater invariance than their presynaptic inputs, while neurons with lower invariance formed more connections. Together, these results provide insights and scalable methodology for mapping neuronal invariances.
Authors
- Stelios Papadopoulos (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7991-6377)
- Ján Antolík (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7223-4426)
- Fabio Anselmi
- Eric Yuhsiang Wang
- Emmanouil Froudarakis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3249-3845)
- P. Fahey
- Fabian H. Sinz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1348-9736)
- Zhuokun Ding (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8610-5182)
- Jiakun Fu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3342-557X)
- Edgar Y. Walker (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0057-957X)
- Erick Gómez Cobos
- Kayla Ponder (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7776-1914)
- Andersen Chang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7626-8714)
- Maria Diamantaki (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8455-7628)
- Santiago A. Cadena (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7508-4443)
- Christos Papadopoulos (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-0669-7968)
- Lydia Ntanavara (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-9158-8408)
- Luca Baroni (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9277-7615)
- Zhiwei Ding
- Alexandros Evangelou
- Xaq Pitkow
- Katrin Franke
- Dat T. Tran
- Sophia Sanborn
- Saumil Patel
- Andreas S. Tolias
- Alexander S. Ecker
- Konstantin Willeke
Institutions
- Salk Institute for Biological Studies (US)
- University of Trieste (IT)
- University of Crete (GR)
- Baylor College of Medicine (US)
- Neurosciences Institute (US)
- University of Washington (US)
- Charles University (CZ)
- Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (DE)
- Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (BG)
- Stanford Medicine (US)
- University of Göttingen (DE)
- Rice University (US)
- Carnegie Mellon University (US)
- University of Tübingen (DE)
- Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (GR)
- Stanford University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Neuroscience
- Published
- 2026-02-25
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-026-02213-3
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Neural dynamics and brain function
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 29.71