Neurometabolic coupling differs for suppression within and beyond the classical receptive field in visual cortex

Neurons in visual cortex exhibit two major types of stimulus elicited suppression. One, cross-orientation suppression, occurs within the classical receptive field (CRF) when an orthogonal grating is superposed on one at optimal orientation. The second, surround suppression, occurs when the size of an optimally oriented grating extends beyond the CRF. Previous proposals suggest that intracortical inhibition is responsible for surround suppression whereas feedforward processes may underlie cross-orientation suppression. To gain more insight concerning these types of suppression, we have included measurements of metabolic function in addition to neural responses. We made co-localized measurements of multiple unit neural activity and tissue oxygen concentrations in the striate cortex of anaesthetized cats while using visual stimuli to activate the two kinds of suppression. Results show that the amplitude of the initial negative oxygen response increases with stimulus size but neural responses decrease as size extends beyond the CRF. This shows that oxygen consumption increases with stimulus size regardless of reduced neural response. On the other hand, amplitudes of both the initial negative oxygen component and the neural responses are simultaneously attenuated by the orthogonal mask in cross-orientation suppression. These different neurometabolic response patterns are consistent with suggestions that the two types of suppressive processes arise from different neural mechanisms.