Input-specific adaptation in complex cells through synaptic depression

A number of experiments have reported that neurons in primary visual cortex can adapt in a stimulus-dependent manner. Synaptic depression is a plausible mechanism for this type of adaptation because its synapse specificity allows modification of particular inputs while allowing others to remain unaffected. Furthermore, a form of synaptic depression measured in slice experiments sets in and recovers over appropriate time scales to account for such an effect. We show that synaptic depression on feedforward, but not on recurrent, inputs can produce a fast form of spatial-phase-specific adaptation in a complex cell model. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.