Theta, but Not Gamma Oscillations in Area V4 Depend on Input from Primary Visual Cortex
Ricardo Kienitz, Michele A. Cox, Kacie Dougherty, Richard C. Saunders, Joscha T. Schmiedt, David A. Leopold, Alexander Maier, Michael C. Schmid
Abstract
Here, we report on experiments in macaque monkeys in which we experimentally assessed the presence of both oscillations in the neural activity recorded from multi-electrode arrays in V1 and V4 before and after a permanent V1 lesion. With intact cortex, theta and gamma oscillations could be reliably elicited in V1 and V4 when monkeys viewed a visual contour illusion and showed phase-to-amplitude coupling. Laminar analysis in V1 revealed that both theta and gamma oscillations occurred primarily in the supragranular layers, the cortical output compartment of V1. However, there was a clear dissociation between the two rhythms in V4 that became apparent when the major feedforward input to V4 was removed by lesioning V1: although V1 lesioning eliminated V4 theta, it had little effect on V4 gamma power except for delaying its emergence by >100 ms. These findings suggest that theta is more tightly associated with feedforward processing than gamma and pose limits on the proposed role of gamma as a feedforward mechanism.