RESEARCH ARTICLE Biophysical Network Modelling of the dLGN Circuit: Different Effects of Triadic and Axonal Inhibition on Visual Responses of Relay Cells Thomas Heiberg1, Espen Hagen1,2, Geir Halnes1, Gaute T. Einevoll1,3* 1 Department of Mathematical Sciences and Technology, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, Norway, 2 Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6) and Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6) and a11111 JARA BRAIN Institute I, Jülich Research Centre, Jülich, Germany, 3 Department of Physics, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway *
[email protected] Abstract OPEN ACCESS Despite its prominent placement between the retina and primary visual cortex in the early Citation: Heiberg T, Hagen E, Halnes G, Einevoll GT visual pathway, the role of the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN) in molding and regu- (2016) Biophysical Network Modelling of the dLGN lating the visual signals entering the brain is still poorly understood. A striking feature of the Circuit: Different Effects of Triadic and Axonal Inhibition on Visual Responses of Relay Cells. PLoS dLGN circuit is that relay cells (RCs) and interneurons (INs) form so-called triadic synapses, Comput Biol 12(5): e1004929. doi:10.1371/journal. where an IN dendritic terminal can be simultaneously postsynaptic to a retinal ganglion cell pcbi.1004929 (GC) input and presynaptic to an RC dendrite, allowing for so-called triadic inhibition. Taking Editor: Arnd Roth, University College London, advantage of a recently developed biophysically detailed multicompartmental model for an UNITED KINGDOM IN, we here investigate putative effects of these different inhibitory actions of INs, i.e., triadic Received: August 29, 2015 inhibition and standard axonal inhibition, on the response properties of RCs.