Influence of contrast on the responses of marmoset lateral geniculate cells to drifting gratings

The responses of lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) cells in the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) to drifting luminance or cone isolating gratings of different spatial frequencies and contrasts were measured. The response noise, defined as the variability of the responses to single sweeps in the complex plane, was independent of stimulus contrast and spatial frequency but increased with increasing overall responsiveness of the cell. The signal-to-noise ratio of parvocellular (PC) cells was smaller than of magnocellular (MC) cells. At each contrast, the response amplitude as a function of spatial frequency could be described with a difference of Gaussians model. With this model, the sizes and the peak sensitivities of the receptive field centers and surrounds were estimated. It was found that receptive field center and surround sizes of LGN cells decrease slightly with increasing contrast. Further, the peak sensitivity decreases with increasing contrast. The two factors are involved in a decrease in responsivity (the response per unit contrast) with increasing contrast which is compatible to response saturation for low spatial frequency stimuli. PC cells did not saturate as much to luminance stimuli although some saturation was found with cone isolating gratings. We found that the response phase lag of both PC and MC cells decreased with increasing contrast, which cannot be explained on the basis of linear response behavior. Apparently the phase of LGN cell responses to drifting gratings is altered in comparison with the retinal inputs by additional nonlinearities.