# Role of cortical interneurons in visual perception

> **NIH NIH F32** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY · 2020 · $64,926

## Abstract

Project Summary
In mammalian neocortex, sensory stimulation evokes highly structured patterns of neural activity. How groups
of neurons with specific patterns of neural activity encode information is a question remaining at the forefront of
systems neuroscience. Recurrent connections between cells with similar response properties are proposed to
amplify stimulus features and serve as building blocks of neural ensembles, but how competing ensembles
encoding different stimulus features interact to form a single coherent percept is unknown. In the case of
vision, natural visual scenes are often comprised of multiple stimulus features that represent the subject or the
background of a visual scene, each of which evoke competing and overlapping ensembles. Therefore, a
fundamental computational problem for the brain is the parsing of salient features from the background of a
visual scene. Cortical circuits must be able to quickly determine features that correlate to the primary figure
and amplify ensembles encoding representation of those features. The overall hypothesis of this proposal is
that like-to-like inhibition, mediated by somatostatin-expressing interneurons, suppresses competing
ensembles to amplify ensembles encoding unique stimulus features. I hypothesize these mechanisms underly
canonical cortical computations, such as surround suppression, as well as visual perceptual phenomena, such
as figure-ground segregation. To test this hypothesis, this study uses a combination of in vivo holographic
optogenetics, 2-photon calcium imaging, and behavioral assays in an effort to understand the mechanisms
underlying the neural basis of perception. The specific aims of this project independently examine the circuit
basis of orientation selectivity of surround suppression and tests whether these circuits are a neural correlate
of figure-ground perception in mouse primary visual cortex. Taken together, these experiments will test the
more fundamental ideas of the nature of neural circuits involved in perception and how percepts are
represented in the brain. This proposal will therefore provide a basis for understanding psychiatric and
neurological diseases that have yet eluded mechanistic understanding and medical treatment.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10068075
- **Project number:** 1F32EY031977-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY
- **Principal Investigator:** William David Hendricks
- **Activity code:** F32 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $64,926
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-09-01 → 2023-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10068075

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10068075, Role of cortical interneurons in visual perception (1F32EY031977-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10068075. Licensed CC0.

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