Complementary inhibitory weight profiles emerge from plasticity and allow attentional switching of receptive fields

Cortical areas comprise multiple types of inhibitory interneurons with stereotypical connectivity motifs, but their combined effect on postsynaptic dynamics has been largely unexplored. Here, we analyse the response of a single postsynaptic model neuron receiving tuned excitatory connections alongside inhibition from two plastic populations. Depending on the inhibitory plasticity rule, synapses remain unspecific (flat), become anti-correlated to, or mirror excitatory synapses. Crucially, the neuron’s receptive field, i.e., its response to presynaptic stimuli, depends on the modulatory state of inhibition. When both inhibitory populations are active, inhibition balances excitation, resulting in uncorrelated postsynaptic responses regardless of the inhibitory tuning profiles. Modulating the activity of a given inhibitory population produces strong correlations to either preferred or non-preferred inputs, in line with recent experimental findings showing dramatic context-dependent changes of neurons’ receptive fields. We thus confirm that a neuron’s receptive field doesn’t follow directly from the weight profiles of its presynaptic afferents.