Visual information is broadcast among cortical areas in discrete channels

Among brain areas, axonal projections carry channels of information that can be mixed to varying degrees. Here, we assess the rules for the network consisting of the primary visual cortex and higher visual areas (V1-HVA) in mice. We use large field-of-view two-photon calcium imaging to measure correlated variability (i.e., noise correlations, NCs) among thousands of neurons, forming over a million unique pairs, distributed across multiple cortical areas simultaneously. The amplitude of NCs is proportional to functional connectivity in the network, and we find that they are robust, reproducible statistical measures, and are remarkably similar across stimuli, thus providing effective constraints to network models. We used these NCs to measure the statistics of functional connectivity among tuning classes of neurons in V1 and HVAs. Using a data-driven clustering approach, we identify approximately 60 distinct tuning classes found in V1 and HVAs. We find that NCs are higher between neurons from the same tuning class, both within and across cortical areas. Thus, in the V1-HVA network, mixing of channels is avoided. Instead, distinct channels of visual information are broadcast within and across cortical areas, at both the micron and millimeter length scales. This principle for the functional organization and correlation structure at the individual neuron level across multiple cortical areas can inform and constrain computational theories of neocortical networks.