Differences in the time course of short-term depression across receptive fields are correlated with directional selectivity in electrosensory neurons

Directional selectivity, in which neurons respond preferentially to one direction of movement ("preferred") over the opposite direction ("null"), is a critical computation that is found in the nervous systems of many animals. Here we show the first experimental evidence for a correlation between differences in short-term depression and direction-selective responses to moving objects. As predicted by quantitative models, the observed differences in the time courses of short-term depression at different locations within receptive fields were correlated with measures of direction selectivity in awake, behaving weakly electric fish (Apteronotus leptorhynchus). Because short-term depression is ubiquitous in the central nervous systems of vertebrate animals, it may be a common mechanism used for the generation of directional selectivity and other spatiotemporal computations.