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1.
Eur J Neurosci ; 57(6): 918-939, 2023 03.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-36732934

RESUMO

The computational role of a neuron during attention depends on its firing properties, neurotransmitter expression and functional connectivity. Neurons in the visual cortical area V4 are reliably engaged by selective attention but exhibit diversity in the effect of attention on firing rates and correlated variability. It remains unclear what specific neuronal properties shape these attention effects. In this study, we quantitatively characterised the distribution of attention modulation of firing rates across populations of V4 neurons. Neurons exhibited a continuum of time-varying attention effects. At one end of the continuum, neurons' spontaneous firing rates were slightly depressed with attention (compared to when unattended), whereas their stimulus responses were enhanced with attention. The other end of the continuum showed the converse pattern: attention depressed stimulus responses but increased spontaneous activity. We tested whether the particular pattern of time-varying attention effects that a neuron exhibited was related to the shape of their actions potentials (so-called 'fast-spiking' [FS] neurons have been linked to inhibition) and the strength of their coupling to the overall population. We found an interdependence among neural attention effects, neuron type and population coupling. In particular, we found neurons for which attention enhanced spontaneous activity but suppressed stimulus responses were less likely to be fast-spiking (more likely to be non-fast-spiking) and tended to have stronger population coupling, compared to neurons with other types of attention effects. These results add important information to our understanding of visual attention circuits at the cellular level.


Assuntos
Neurônios , Transdução de Sinais , Neurônios/fisiologia , Potenciais de Ação/fisiologia
2.
Eur J Neurosci ; 57(9): 1561-1576, 2023 05.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-36918361

RESUMO

Neurons in the primate middle temporal (MT) area signal information about visual motion and work together with the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) to support memory-guided comparisons of visual motion direction. These areas are reciprocally connected, and both contain neurons that signal visual motion direction in the strength of their responses. Previously, LPFC was shown to display marked changes in stimulus coding with altered task demands, including changes in selectivity for motion direction, trial-to-trial variability in responses and comparison effects. Since MT and LPFC are directly interconnected, we sought to determine if MT neurons display similar dependence on task demands. We found that active participation in a motion direction comparison task affected both sensory and nonsensory activity in MT neurons. In fact, neurons that became less selective for motion direction during the active task showed increased signalling for cognitive aspects of the task. This heterogeneity in neural modification with heightened task demands suggests a division of labour in MT, whereby sensory and cognitive signals are both heightened in different subpopulations of neurons.


Assuntos
Percepção de Movimento , Animais , Percepção de Movimento/fisiologia , Memória de Curto Prazo/fisiologia , Lobo Temporal/fisiologia , Neurônios/fisiologia , Cognição , Estimulação Luminosa
3.
Cereb Cortex ; 32(15): 3331-3346, 2022 07 21.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-34963140

RESUMO

Decades of research have shown that global brain states such as arousal can be indexed by measuring the properties of the eyes. The spiking responses of neurons throughout the brain have been associated with the pupil, small fixational saccades, and vigor in eye movements, but it has been difficult to isolate how internal states affect the eyes, and vice versa. While recording from populations of neurons in the visual and prefrontal cortex (PFC), we recently identified a latent dimension of neural activity called "slow drift," which appears to reflect a shift in a global brain state. Here, we asked if slow drift is correlated with the action of the eyes in distinct behavioral tasks. We recorded from visual cortex (V4) while monkeys performed a change detection task, and PFC, while they performed a memory-guided saccade task. In both tasks, slow drift was associated with the size of the pupil and the microsaccade rate, two external indicators of the internal state of the animal. These results show that metrics related to the action of the eyes are associated with a dominant and task-independent mode of neural activity that can be accessed in the population activity of neurons across the cortex.


Assuntos
Movimentos Sacádicos , Córtex Visual , Animais , Cognição , Neurônios/fisiologia , Pupila , Córtex Visual/fisiologia
4.
J Neurosci ; 41(44): 9163-9176, 2021 11 03.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-34583956

RESUMO

Attention often requires maintaining a stable mental state over time while simultaneously improving perceptual sensitivity. These requirements place conflicting demands on neural populations, as sensitivity implies a robust response to perturbation by incoming stimuli, which is antithetical to stability. Functional specialization of cortical areas provides one potential mechanism to resolve this conflict. We reasoned that attention signals in executive control areas might be highly stable over time, reflecting maintenance of the cognitive state, thereby freeing up sensory areas to be more sensitive to sensory input (i.e., unstable), which would be reflected by more dynamic attention signals in those areas. To test these predictions, we simultaneously recorded neural populations in prefrontal cortex (PFC) and visual cortical area V4 in rhesus macaque monkeys performing an endogenous spatial selective attention task. Using a decoding approach, we found that the neural code for attention states in PFC was substantially more stable over time compared with the attention code in V4 on a moment-by-moment basis, in line with our guiding thesis. Moreover, attention signals in PFC predicted the future attention state of V4 better than vice versa, consistent with a top-down role for PFC in attention. These results suggest a functional specialization of attention mechanisms across cortical areas with a division of labor. PFC signals the cognitive state and maintains this state stably over time, whereas V4 responds to sensory input in a manner dynamically modulated by that cognitive state.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Attention requires maintaining a stable mental state while simultaneously improving perceptual sensitivity. We hypothesized that these two demands (stability and sensitivity) are distributed between prefrontal and visual cortical areas, respectively. Specifically, we predicted attention signals in visual cortex would be less stable than in prefrontal cortex, and furthermore prefrontal cortical signals would predict attention signals in visual cortex in line with the hypothesized role of prefrontal cortex in top-down executive control. Our results are consistent with suggestions deriving from previous work using separate recordings in the two brain areas in different animals performing different tasks and represent the first direct evidence in support of this hypothesis with simultaneous multiarea recordings within individual animals.


Assuntos
Atenção , Neurônios/fisiologia , Córtex Pré-Frontal/fisiologia , Córtex Visual/fisiologia , Animais , Macaca mulatta , Masculino , Córtex Pré-Frontal/citologia , Córtex Visual/citologia
5.
J Neurosci ; 39(23): 4511-4526, 2019 06 05.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-30914447

RESUMO

The sequence of events leading to an eye movement to a target begins the moment visual information has reached the brain, well in advance of the eye movement itself. The process by which visual information is encoded and used to generate a motor plan has been the focus of substantial interest partly because of the rapid and reproducible nature of saccadic eye movements, and the key role that they play in primate behavior. Signals related to eye movements are present in much of the primate brain, yet most neurophysiological studies of the transition from vision to eye movements have measured the activity of one neuron at a time. Less is known about how the coordinated action of populations of neurons contribute to the initiation of eye movements. One cortical area of particular interest in this process is the frontal eye fields, a region of prefrontal cortex that has descending projections to oculomotor control centers. We recorded from populations of frontal eye field neurons in macaque monkeys engaged in a memory-guided saccade task. We found a variety of neurons with visually evoked responses, saccade-aligned responses, and mixtures of both. We took advantage of the simultaneous nature of the recordings to measure variability in individual neurons and pairs of neurons from trial-to-trial, as well as the moment-to-moment population activity structure. We found that these measures were related to saccadic reaction times, suggesting that the population-level organization of frontal eye field activity is important for the transition from perception to movement.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The transition from perception to action involves coordination among neurons across the brain. In the case of eye movements, visual and motor signals coexist in individual neurons as well as in neighboring neurons. We used a task designed to compartmentalize the visual and motor aspects of this transition and studied populations of neurons in the frontal eye fields, a key cortical area containing neurons that are implicated in the transition from vision to eye movements. We found that the time required for subjects to produce an eye movement could be predicted from the statistics of the neuronal response of populations of frontal eye field neurons, suggesting that these neurons coordinate their activity to optimize the transition from perception to action.


Assuntos
Mapeamento Encefálico , Lobo Frontal/fisiologia , Neurônios/fisiologia , Desempenho Psicomotor/fisiologia , Movimentos Sacádicos/fisiologia , Memória Espacial/fisiologia , Potenciais de Ação , Animais , Análise Fatorial , Fixação Ocular/fisiologia , Macaca mulatta , Masculino , Microeletrodos , Técnicas de Patch-Clamp , Tempo de Reação , Reprodutibilidade dos Testes , Projetos de Pesquisa
6.
Eur J Neurosci ; 48(7): 2466-2481, 2018 10.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-29363843

RESUMO

Long-range interactions between cortical areas are undoubtedly a key to the computational power of the brain. For healthy human subjects, the premier method for measuring brain activity on fast timescales is electroencephalography (EEG), and coherence between EEG signals is often used to assay functional connectivity between different brain regions. However, the nature of the underlying brain activity that is reflected in EEG coherence is currently the realm of speculation, because seldom have EEG signals been recorded simultaneously with intracranial recordings near cell bodies in multiple brain areas. Here, we take the early steps towards narrowing this gap in our understanding of EEG coherence by measuring local field potentials with microelectrode arrays in two brain areas (extrastriate visual area V4 and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) simultaneously with EEG at the nearby scalp in rhesus macaque monkeys. Although we found inter-area coherence at both scales of measurement, we did not find that scalp-level coherence was reliably related to coherence between brain areas measured intracranially on a trial-to-trial basis, despite that scalp-level EEG was related to other important features of neural oscillations, such as trial-to-trial variability in overall amplitudes. This suggests that caution must be exercised when interpreting EEG coherence effects, and new theories devised about what aspects of neural activity long-range coherence in the EEG reflects.


Assuntos
Mapeamento Encefálico , Encéfalo/fisiologia , Eletroencefalografia , Couro Cabeludo/fisiologia , Animais , Artefatos , Eletroencefalografia/métodos , Haplorrinos , Macaca mulatta , Microeletrodos , Rede Nervosa/fisiologia , Córtex Pré-Frontal/fisiologia
7.
Curr Opin Neurol ; 31(1): 59-65, 2018 Feb.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-29076880

RESUMO

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: The computational power of the brain arises from the complex interactions between neurons. One straightforward method to quantify the strength of neuronal interactions is by measuring correlation and coherence. Efforts to measure correlation have been advancing rapidly of late, spurred by the development of advanced recording technologies enabling recording from many neurons and brain areas simultaneously. This review highlights recent results that provide clues into the principles of neural coordination, connections to cognitive and neurological phenomena, and key directions for future research. RECENT FINDINGS: The correlation structure of neural activity in the brain has important consequences for the encoding properties of neural populations. Recent studies have shown that this correlation structure is not fixed, but adapts in a variety of contexts in ways that appear beneficial to task performance. By studying these changes in biological neural networks and computational models, researchers have improved our understanding of the principles guiding neural communication. SUMMARY: Correlation and coherence are highly informative metrics for studying coding and communication in the brain. Recent findings have emphasized how the brain modifies correlation structure dynamically in order to improve information-processing in a goal-directed fashion. One key direction for future research concerns how to leverage these dynamic changes for therapeutic purposes.


Assuntos
Encéfalo/fisiologia , Modelos Neurológicos , Rede Nervosa/fisiologia , Neurônios/fisiologia , Humanos
8.
J Neurophysiol ; 116(4): 1807-1820, 2016 10 01.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-27466133

RESUMO

Inhibition and excitation form two fundamental modes of neuronal interaction, yet we understand relatively little about their distinct roles in service of perceptual and cognitive processes. We developed a multidimensional waveform analysis to identify fast-spiking (putative inhibitory) and regular-spiking (putative excitatory) neurons in vivo and used this method to analyze how attention affects these two cell classes in visual area V4 of the extrastriate cortex of rhesus macaques. We found that putative inhibitory neurons had both greater increases in firing rate and decreases in correlated variability with attention compared with putative excitatory neurons. Moreover, the time course of attention effects for putative inhibitory neurons more closely tracked the temporal statistics of target probability in our task. Finally, the session-to-session variability in a behavioral measure of attention covaried with the magnitude of this effect. Together, these results suggest that selective targeting of inhibitory neurons and networks is a critical mechanism for attentional modulation.


Assuntos
Atenção/fisiologia , Inibição Neural/fisiologia , Neurônios/fisiologia , Córtex Visual/fisiologia , Potenciais de Ação , Animais , Eletrodos Implantados , Macaca mulatta , Masculino , Vias Neurais/fisiologia , Testes Neuropsicológicos , Estimulação Luminosa , Percepção Visual/fisiologia
9.
PLoS Comput Biol ; 11(10): e1004549, 2015 Oct.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-26465621

RESUMO

Pairs of active neurons frequently fire action potentials or "spikes" nearly synchronously (i.e., within 5 ms of each other). This spike synchrony may occur by chance, based solely on the neurons' fluctuating firing patterns, or it may occur too frequently to be explicable by chance alone. When spike synchrony above chances levels is present, it may subserve computation for a specific cognitive process, or it could be an irrelevant byproduct of such computation. Either way, spike synchrony is a feature of neural data that should be explained. A point process regression framework has been developed previously for this purpose, using generalized linear models (GLMs). In this framework, the observed number of synchronous spikes is compared to the number predicted by chance under varying assumptions about the factors that affect each of the individual neuron's firing-rate functions. An important possible source of spike synchrony is network-wide oscillations, which may provide an essential mechanism of network information flow. To establish the statistical link between spike synchrony and network-wide oscillations, we have integrated oscillatory field potentials into our point process regression framework. We first extended a previously-published model of spike-field association and showed that we could recover phase relationships between oscillatory field potentials and firing rates. We then used this new framework to demonstrate the statistical relationship between oscillatory field potentials and spike synchrony in: 1) simulated neurons, 2) in vitro recordings of hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cells, and 3) in vivo recordings of neocortical V4 neurons. Our results provide a rigorous method for establishing a statistical link between network oscillations and neural synchrony.


Assuntos
Potenciais de Ação/fisiologia , Relógios Biológicos/fisiologia , Sincronização Cortical/fisiologia , Modelos Neurológicos , Modelos Estatísticos , Rede Nervosa/fisiologia , Animais , Células Cultivadas , Simulação por Computador , Retroalimentação Fisiológica/fisiologia , Humanos , Macaca mulatta , Masculino , Camundongos , Transmissão Sináptica/fisiologia
10.
J Neurosci ; 34(34): 11222-7, 2014 Aug 20.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-25143603

RESUMO

The trial-to-trial response variability of nearby cortical neurons is correlated. These correlations may strongly influence population coding performance. Numerous studies have shown that correlations can be dynamically modified by attention, adaptation, learning, and potent stimulus drive. However, the mechanisms that influence correlation strength remain poorly understood. Here we test whether correlations are influenced by presenting stimuli outside the classical receptive field (RF) of visual neurons, where they recruit a normalization signal termed surround suppression. We recorded simultaneously the activity of dozens of cells using microelectrode arrays implanted in the superficial layers of V1 in anesthetized, paralyzed macaque monkeys. We presented annular stimuli that encircled--but did not impinge upon--the RFs of the recorded cells. We found that these "extra-classical" stimuli reduced correlations in the absence of stimulation of the RF, closely resembling the decorrelating effects of stimulating the RFs directly. Our results suggest that normalization signals may be an important mechanism for modulating correlations.


Assuntos
Neurônios/fisiologia , Estatística como Assunto , Córtex Visual/citologia , Campos Visuais/fisiologia , Vias Visuais/fisiologia , Percepção Visual/fisiologia , Potenciais de Ação/fisiologia , Algoritmos , Animais , Macaca fascicularis , Masculino , Estimulação Luminosa
11.
J Neurophysiol ; 114(3): 1468-82, 2015 Sep.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-26108954

RESUMO

The development and refinement of noninvasive techniques for imaging neural activity is of paramount importance for human neuroscience. Currently, the most accessible and popular technique is electroencephalography (EEG). However, nearly all of what we know about the neural events that underlie EEG signals is based on inference, because of the dearth of studies that have simultaneously paired EEG recordings with direct recordings of single neurons. From the perspective of electrophysiologists there is growing interest in understanding how spiking activity coordinates with large-scale cortical networks. Evidence from recordings at both scales highlights that sensory neurons operate in very distinct states during spontaneous and visually evoked activity, which appear to form extremes in a continuum of coordination in neural networks. We hypothesized that individual neurons have idiosyncratic relationships to large-scale network activity indexed by EEG signals, owing to the neurons' distinct computational roles within the local circuitry. We tested this by recording neuronal populations in visual area V4 of rhesus macaques while we simultaneously recorded EEG. We found substantial heterogeneity in the timing and strength of spike-EEG relationships and that these relationships became more diverse during visual stimulation compared with the spontaneous state. The visual stimulus apparently shifts V4 neurons from a state in which they are relatively uniformly embedded in large-scale network activity to a state in which their distinct roles within the local population are more prominent, suggesting that the specific way in which individual neurons relate to EEG signals may hold clues regarding their computational roles.


Assuntos
Potenciais de Ação , Potenciais Evocados Visuais , Células Receptoras Sensoriais/fisiologia , Córtex Visual/fisiologia , Animais , Estimulação Elétrica , Eletroencefalografia , Macaca mulatta , Masculino , Estimulação Luminosa , Tempo de Reação , Córtex Visual/citologia
12.
Neuroimage ; 65: 395-407, 2013 Jan 15.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-23041338

RESUMO

Neuroimaging has demonstrated anatomical overlap between covert and overt attention systems, although behavioral and electrophysiological studies have suggested that the two systems do not rely on entirely identical circuits or mechanisms. In a parallel line of research, topographically-specific modulations of alpha-band power (~8-14 Hz) have been consistently correlated with anticipatory states during tasks requiring covert attention shifts. These tasks, however, typically employ cue-target-interval paradigms where attentional processes are examined across relatively protracted periods of time and not at the rapid timescales implicated during overt attention tasks. The anti-saccade task, where one must first covertly attend for a peripheral target, before executing a rapid overt attention shift (i.e. a saccade) to the opposite side of space, is particularly well-suited for examining the rapid dynamics of overt attentional deployments. Here, we asked whether alpha-band oscillatory mechanisms would also be associated with these very rapid overt shifts, potentially representing a common neural mechanism across overt and covert attention systems. High-density electroencephalography in conjunction with infra-red eye-tracking was recorded while participants engaged in both pro- and anti-saccade task blocks. Alpha power, time-locked to saccade onset, showed three distinct phases of significantly lateralized topographic shifts, all occurring within a period of less than 1s, closely reflecting the temporal dynamics of anti-saccade performance. Only two such phases were observed during the pro-saccade task. These data point to substantially more rapid temporal dynamics of alpha-band suppressive mechanisms than previously established, and implicate oscillatory alpha-band activity as a common mechanism across both overt and covert attentional deployments.


Assuntos
Atenção/fisiologia , Encéfalo/fisiologia , Movimentos Sacádicos/fisiologia , Adulto , Sinais (Psicologia) , Eletroencefalografia , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Tempo de Reação/fisiologia , Adulto Jovem
13.
J Neurosci ; 31(27): 9923-32, 2011 Jul 06.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-21734284

RESUMO

Oscillatory alpha-band activity (8-15 Hz) over parieto-occipital cortex in humans plays an important role in suppression of processing for inputs at to-be-ignored regions of space, with increased alpha-band power observed over cortex contralateral to locations expected to contain distractors. It is unclear whether similar processes operate during deployment of spatial attention in other sensory modalities. Evidence from lesion patients suggests that parietal regions house supramodal representations of space. The parietal lobes are prominent generators of alpha oscillations, raising the possibility that alpha is a neural signature of supramodal spatial attention. Furthermore, when spatial attention is deployed within vision, processing of task-irrelevant auditory inputs at attended locations is also enhanced, pointing to automatic links between spatial deployments across senses. Here, we asked whether lateralized alpha-band activity is also evident in a purely auditory spatial-cueing task and whether it had the same underlying generator configuration as in a purely visuospatial task. If common to both sensory systems, this would provide strong support for "supramodal" attention theory. Alternately, alpha-band differences between auditory and visual tasks would support a sensory-specific account. Lateralized shifts in alpha-band activity were indeed observed during a purely auditory spatial task. Crucially, there were clear differences in scalp topographies of this alpha activity depending on the sensory system within which spatial attention was deployed. Findings suggest that parietally generated alpha-band mechanisms are central to attentional deployments across modalities but that they are invoked in a sensory-specific manner. The data support an "interactivity account," whereby a supramodal system interacts with sensory-specific control systems during deployment of spatial attention.


Assuntos
Ritmo alfa/fisiologia , Atenção/fisiologia , Mapeamento Encefálico , Córtex Cerebral/fisiologia , Percepção Espacial/fisiologia , Estimulação Acústica/métodos , Adolescente , Adulto , Análise de Variância , Córtex Cerebral/anatomia & histologia , Eletroencefalografia/métodos , Feminino , Lateralidade Funcional/fisiologia , Humanos , Masculino , Estimulação Luminosa/métodos , Tempo de Reação , Análise Espectral , Fatores de Tempo , Adulto Jovem
14.
J Neurosci ; 31(27): 9971-81, 2011 Jul 06.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-21734288

RESUMO

The simultaneous presentation of a stimulus in one sensory modality often enhances target detection in another sensory modality, but the neural mechanisms that govern these effects are still under investigation. Here, we test a hypothesis proposed in the neurophysiological literature: that auditory facilitation of visual-target detection operates through cross-sensory phase reset of ongoing neural oscillations (Lakatos et al., 2009). To date, measurement limitations have prevented this potentially powerful neural mechanism from being directly linked with its predicted behavioral consequences. The present experiment uses a psychophysical approach in humans to demonstrate, for the first time, stimulus-locked periodicity in visual-target detection, following a temporally informative sound. Our data further demonstrate that periodicity in behavioral performance is strongly influenced by the probability of audiovisual co-occurrence. We argue that fluctuations in visual-target detection result from cross-sensory phase reset, both at the moment it occurs and persisting for seconds thereafter. The precise frequency at which this periodicity operates remains to be determined through a method that allows for a higher sampling rate.


Assuntos
Percepção Auditiva/fisiologia , Periodicidade , Tempo de Reação/fisiologia , Enquadramento Psicológico , Detecção de Sinal Psicológico/fisiologia , Percepção Visual/fisiologia , Estimulação Acústica/métodos , Adulto , Feminino , Análise de Fourier , Humanos , Masculino , Modelos Biológicos , Estimulação Luminosa/métodos , Psicofísica , Adulto Jovem
15.
Neuroimage ; 59(4): 4074-85, 2012 Feb 15.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-22037001

RESUMO

The visual system can automatically interpolate or "fill-in" the boundaries of objects when inputs are fragmented or incomplete. A canonical class of visual stimuli known as illusory-contour (IC) stimuli has been extensively used to study this contour interpolation process. Visual evoked potential (VEP) studies have identified a neural signature of these boundary completion processes, the so-called IC-effect, which typically onsets at 90-110 ms and is generated within the lateral occipital complex (LOC). Here we set out to determine the delimiting factors of automatic boundary completion with the use of illusory contour stimuli and high-density scalp recordings of brain activity. Retinal eccentricity, ratio of real to illusory contours (i.e. support ratio), and inducer diameter were each varied parametrically, and any resulting effects on the amplitude and latency of the IC-effect were examined. Somewhat surprisingly, the amplitude of the IC-effect was found to be impervious to all changes in these stimulus parameters, manipulations that are known to impact perceived illusion strength. Thus, this automatic stage of object processing appears to be a binary process in which, so-long as minimal conditions are met, contours are automatically completed. At the same time, the latency of the IC-effect was found to vary inversely with support ratio, likely reflecting the additional time necessary to interpolate across the relatively longer induced boundaries of the implied object. These data are interpreted in the context of a two stage object-recognition model that parses processing into an early automatic perceptual stage that is followed by a more effortful conceptual processing stage.


Assuntos
Ilusões Ópticas/fisiologia , Córtex Visual/fisiologia , Percepção Visual/fisiologia , Adulto , Fenômenos Eletrofisiológicos , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Adulto Jovem
16.
Eur J Neurosci ; 35(6): 960-7, 2012 Mar.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-22429245

RESUMO

Humans have limited cognitive resources to process the nearly limitless information available in the environment. Endogenous, or 'top-down', selective attention to basic visual features such as color or motion is a common strategy for biasing resources in favor of the most relevant information sources in a given context. Opposing this top-down separation of features is a 'bottom-up' tendency to integrate, or bind, the various features that constitute objects. We pitted these two processes against each other in an electrophysiological experiment to test if top-down selective attention can overcome constitutive binding processes. Our results demonstrate that bottom-up binding processes can dominate top-down feature-based attention even when explicitly detrimental to task performance.


Assuntos
Atenção/fisiologia , Encéfalo/fisiologia , Tempo de Reação/fisiologia , Análise e Desempenho de Tarefas , Adulto , Eletroencefalografia , Potenciais Evocados/fisiologia , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Estimulação Luminosa , Adulto Jovem
17.
eNeuro ; 9(3)2022.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-35606150

RESUMO

Electroencephalography (EEG) has long been used to index brain states, from early studies describing activity in the presence and absence of visual stimulation to modern work employing complex perceptual tasks. These studies have shed light on brain-wide signals but often lack explanatory power at the single neuron level. Similarly, single neuron recordings can suffer from an inability to measure brain-wide signals accessible using EEG. Here, we combined these techniques while monkeys performed a change detection task and discovered a novel link between spontaneous EEG activity and a neural signal embedded in the spiking responses of neuronal populations. This "slow drift" was associated with fluctuations in the subjects' arousal levels over time: decreases in prestimulus α power were accompanied by increases in pupil size and decreases in microsaccade rate. These results show that brain-wide EEG signals can be used to index modes of activity present in single neuron recordings, that in turn reflect global changes in brain state that influence perception and behavior.


Assuntos
Nível de Alerta , Eletroencefalografia , Encéfalo/fisiologia , Eletroencefalografia/métodos , Humanos , Neurônios , Estimulação Luminosa
18.
J Neurosci ; 30(11): 4024-32, 2010 Mar 17.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-20237273

RESUMO

Retinotopically specific increases in alpha-band ( approximately 10 Hz) oscillatory power have been strongly implicated in the suppression of processing for irrelevant parts of the visual field during the deployment of visuospatial attention. Here, we asked whether this alpha suppression mechanism also plays a role in the nonspatial anticipatory biasing of feature-based attention. Visual word cues informed subjects what the task-relevant feature of an upcoming visual stimulus (S2) was, while high-density electroencephalographic recordings were acquired. We examined anticipatory oscillatory activity in the Cue-to-S2 interval ( approximately 2 s). Subjects were cued on a trial-by-trial basis to attend to either the color or direction of motion of an upcoming dot field array, and to respond when they detected that a subset of the dots differed from the majority along the target feature dimension. We used the features of color and motion, expressly because they have well known, spatially separated cortical processing areas, to distinguish shifts in alpha power over areas processing each feature. Alpha power from dorsal regions increased when motion was the irrelevant feature (i.e., color was cued), and alpha power from ventral regions increased when color was irrelevant. Thus, alpha-suppression mechanisms appear to operate during feature-based selection in much the same manner as has been shown for space-based attention.


Assuntos
Ritmo alfa/métodos , Atenção/fisiologia , Mapeamento Encefálico/métodos , Percepção de Cores/fisiologia , Percepção de Movimento/fisiologia , Estimulação Luminosa/métodos , Adulto , Sinais (Psicologia) , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Córtex Visual/fisiologia , Adulto Jovem
19.
Neuroimage ; 56(1): 373-83, 2011 May 01.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-21276862

RESUMO

The neural processing of biological motion (BM) is of profound experimental interest since it is often through the movement of another that we interpret their immediate intentions. Neuroimaging points to a specialized cortical network for processing biological motion. Here, high-density electrical mapping and source-analysis techniques were employed to interrogate the timing of information processing across this network. Participants viewed point-light-displays depicting standard body movements (e.g. jumping), while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded and compared to ERPs to scrambled motion control stimuli. In a pair of experiments, three major phases of BM-specific processing were identified: 1) The earliest phase of BM-sensitive modulation was characterized by a positive shift of the ERP between 100 and 200 ms after stimulus onset. This modulation was observed exclusively over the right hemisphere and source-analysis suggested a likely generator in close proximity to regions associated with general motion processing (KO/hMT). 2) The second phase of BM-sensitivity occurred from 200 to 350 ms, characterized by a robust negative-going ERP modulation over posterior middle temporal regions bilaterally. Source-analysis pointed to bilateral generators at or near the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS). 3) A third phase of processing was evident only in our second experiment, where participants actively attended the BM aspect of the stimuli, and was manifest as a centro-parietal positive ERP deflection, likely related to later cognitive processes. These results point to very early sensory registration of biological motion, and highlight the interactive role of the posterior STS in analyzing the movements of other living organisms.


Assuntos
Mapeamento Encefálico/métodos , Córtex Cerebral/fisiologia , Percepção de Movimento/fisiologia , Adulto , Eletroencefalografia , Potenciais Evocados/fisiologia , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Processamento de Sinais Assistido por Computador
20.
Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci ; 261(5): 331-9, 2011 Aug.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-21153832

RESUMO

The N1 component of the auditory evoked potential (AEP) is a robust and easily recorded metric of auditory sensory-perceptual processing. In patients with schizophrenia, a diminution in the amplitude of this component is a near-ubiquitous finding. A pair of recent studies has also shown this N1 deficit in first-degree relatives of schizophrenia probands, suggesting that the deficit may be linked to the underlying genetic risk of the disease rather than to the disease state itself. However, in both these studies, a significant proportion of the relatives had other psychiatric conditions. As such, although the N1 deficit represents an intriguing candidate endophenotype for schizophrenia, it remains to be shown whether it is present in a group of clinically unaffected first-degree relatives. In addition to testing first-degree relatives, we also sought to replicate the N1 deficit in a group of first-episode patients and in a group of chronic schizophrenia probands. Subject groups consisted of 35 patients with schizophrenia, 30 unaffected first-degree relatives, 13 first-episode patients, and 22 healthy controls. Subjects sat in a dimly lit room and listened to a series of simple 1,000-Hz tones, indicating with a button press whenever they heard a deviant tone (1,500 Hz; 17% probability), while the AEP was recorded from 72 scalp electrodes. Both chronic and first-episode patients showed clear N1 amplitude decrements relative to healthy control subjects. Crucially, unaffected first-degree relatives also showed a clear N1 deficit. This study provides further support for the proposal that the auditory N1 deficit in schizophrenia is linked to the underlying genetic risk of developing this disorder. In light of recent studies, these results point to the N1 deficit as an endophenotypic marker for schizophrenia. The potential future utility of this metric as one element of a multivariate endophenotype is discussed.


Assuntos
Mapeamento Encefálico , Endofenótipos , Potenciais Evocados Auditivos/fisiologia , Família , Esquizofrenia/fisiopatologia , Estimulação Acústica/métodos , Adulto , Doença Crônica , Eletroencefalografia , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Psicoacústica
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