Astrocytes and neurons exhibit partially shared but distinct composite receptive fields for natural stimuli
Author(s)
Lu, Sihao
Schultz, Simon R
Kozlov, Andriy S
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Astrocytes are increasingly recognized as active participants in sensory processing, but whether they show selective responsesto stimulus features, analogous to neuronal receptive fields, is not yet established. To address this, we used two-photon calciumimaging in the auditory cortex of anesthetized mice during presentation of natural ultrasonic vocalizations. Our aim was to com-pare astrocytic responses with those of neighboring neurons and to determine whether astrocytes exhibit feature-selectivereceptive fields. Event detection showed that astrocytic calcium activity is highly heterogeneous, but only a minority of eventswere consistently stimulus-linked. To examine this stimulus-driven subset, we estimated receptive field features using maximumnoise entropy modeling and compared them with those of concurrently recorded neurons. Despite qualitative similarities inreceptive-field features, analysis of modulation spectra and principal angles showed that astrocytic and neuronal receptive fieldsoverlap but occupy distinct regions of feature space. This indicates that astrocytes and neurons are tuned to partially shared,but not identical, dimensions of the sensory stimulus. Our findings indicate that astrocytes respond to diverse sensory features,playing a complementary role to neuronal encoding. This suggests that astrocytic calcium activity is not simply a reflection ofneuronal firing, but instead represents a distinct component of cortical sensory processing.
NEW & NOTEWORTHY We used two-photon imaging to record calcium activity in astrocytes and neighboring neurons duringpresentation of natural ultrasonic vocalizations. We show that astrocyte activity is highly heterogeneous across spatial and tem-poral scales. Further analyses indicate that a subset of astrocyte calcium activity is stimulus-linked and tuned to dimensions ofthe stimulus that partially overlap with, but are not identical to, those encoded by neurons.
NEW & NOTEWORTHY We used two-photon imaging to record calcium activity in astrocytes and neighboring neurons duringpresentation of natural ultrasonic vocalizations. We show that astrocyte activity is highly heterogeneous across spatial and tem-poral scales. Further analyses indicate that a subset of astrocyte calcium activity is stimulus-linked and tuned to dimensions ofthe stimulus that partially overlap with, but are not identical to, those encoded by neurons.
Date Issued
2026-02-01
Date Acceptance
2025-12-30
Citation
Journal of Neurophysiology, 2026, 135 (2), pp.382-393
ISSN
0022-3077
Publisher
American Physiological Society
Start Page
382
End Page
393
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Neurophysiology
Volume
135
Issue
2
Copyright Statement
© 2026 The Authors. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY 4.0. Published by the American Physiological Society.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/41512847
Subjects
astrocytes
receptive fields
usv
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
United States
Date Publish Online
2026-01-30