Neuronal thresholds and choice-related activity of otolith afferent fibers during heading perception.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
; 112(20): 6467-72, 2015 May 19.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-25941358
ABSTRACT
How activity of sensory neurons leads to perceptual decisions remains a challenge to understand. Correlations between choices and single neuron firing rates have been found early in vestibular processing, in the brainstem and cerebellum. To investigate the origins of choice-related activity, we have recorded from otolith afferent fibers while animals performed a fine heading discrimination task. We find that afferent fibers have similar discrimination thresholds as central cells, and the most sensitive fibers have thresholds that are only twofold or threefold greater than perceptual thresholds. Unlike brainstem and cerebellar nuclei neurons, spike counts from afferent fibers do not exhibit trial-by-trial correlations with perceptual decisions. This finding may reflect the fact that otolith afferent responses are poorly suited for driving heading perception because they fail to discriminate self-motion from changes in orientation relative to gravity. Alternatively, if choice probabilities reflect top-down inference signals, they are not relayed to the vestibular periphery.
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Texto completo:
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Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Orientação
/
Limiar Sensorial
/
Percepção Espacial
/
Membrana dos Otólitos
/
Comportamento de Escolha
Tipo de estudo:
Prognostic_studies
Limite:
Animals
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2015
Tipo de documento:
Article