averaged across all spines was biased towards the orientation tuning of the parent neurons (Fig. 5e, f) (p < 0.01, Wilcoxon rank sum test), although the modulation depth for spines was smaller (p < 0.01, Wilcoxon rank sum test). A similar trend was also apparent in the distributions of preferred orientations across spines (Fig. 5g, h). Our results show that spine fluorescence transients, which are not necessarily good predictors of the strength of excitatory synaptic input39, averaged across a neuron predict the orientation tuning of the cell's output.
