Modification of visual cortical receptive field induced by natural stimuli

Visual experience can cause functional modification in the adult visual cortex; however, how cortical receptive fields (RFs) are dynamically modified by natural scene stimulation remains unclear. Here, using in vivo patch-clamp recordings from neurons in the rat primary visual cortex (V1), we showed that minutes of conditioning with natural movies could increase the similarity between cortical RF structure and the subset of movie images that depolarized the cell. This effect lasted for a few minutes in the absence of further movie stimulation. Manipulating the statistics of the movies by temporal shuffling or spatial whitening showed that the spatiotemporal correlation of the movie was important in inducing the RF modification. Furthermore, the movie-induced RF modification required the activation of N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors. Such rapid RF modification may play an important role in the dynamic coding of natural scenes.