Behavioral Detectability of Single-Cell Stimulation in the Ventral Posterior Medial Nucleus of the Thalamus

Voigt, Birgit C.; Brecht, Michael; Houweling, Arthur R.

doi:10.1523/jneurosci.3046-08.2008

Cited by 28 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 46 publications

(48 reference statements)

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“…2E). Similar findings have been documented in rats and cats (28,29). The difference can be attributed both to differential inputs and to local circuit properties (30,31).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Transformation of the neural code for tactile detection from thalamus to cortex

Vázquez

Salinas

Romo

2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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To understand how sensory-driven neural activity gives rise to perception, it is essential to characterize how various relay stations in the brain encode stimulus presence. Neurons in the ventral posterior lateral (VPL) nucleus of the somatosensory thalamus and in primary somatosensory cortex (S1) respond to vibrotactile stimulation with relatively slow modulations (∼100 ms) of their firing rate. In addition, faster modulations (∼10 ms) time-locked to the stimulus waveform are observed in both areas, but their contribution to stimulus detection is unknown. Furthermore, it is unclear whether VPL and S1 neurons encode stimulus presence with similar accuracy and via the same response features. To address these questions, we recorded single neurons while trained monkeys judged the presence or absence of a vibrotactile stimulus of variable amplitude, and their activity was analyzed with a unique decoding method that is sensitive to the time scale of the firing rate fluctuations. We found that the maximum detection accuracy of single neurons is similar in VPL and S1. However, VPL relies more heavily on fast rate modulations than S1, and as a consequence, the neural code in S1 is more tolerant: its performance degrades less when the readout method or the time scale of integration is suboptimal. Therefore, S1 neurons implement a more robust code, one less sensitive to the temporal integration window used to infer stimulus presence downstream. The differences between VPL and S1 responses signaling the appearance of a stimulus suggest a transformation of the neural code from thalamus to cortex. (1-4), and as the signal is relayed from one layer to the next, its representation in spatiotemporal patterns of activity may change (1). Previous studies have shown that, when a tactile vibratory stimulus is presented, neurons in the ventral posterior lateral (VPL) nucleus in the somatosensory thalamus and primary somatosensory cortex (S1, areas 3b and 1) respond by modulating their firing rates computed over a time scale of hundreds of milliseconds (5-9). Because these slow firing rate modulations occurring within relatively long time windows depend on amplitude and vibration frequency, they encode these key stimulus features. In addition, to varying degrees, evoked spikes in both areas also tend to be synchronized to the waveform of the applied mechanical stimulus, which, for frequencies <40 Hz, varies on a time scale of tens of milliseconds. This entrainment, which corresponds to fast firing rate modulations, also depends on stimulus amplitude (9), and so it too carries information about stimulus presence. However, it is unknown whether both the slow (∼100 ms) and fast (∼10 ms) modulations in firing rate contribute to perceptual performance during stimulus detection. Moreover, it is not clear whether the two time scales are equally important in VPL and S1, nor whether the capacity to signal stimulus presence changes from one area to the next.To investigate these issues, we recorded activity from single neurons in the VPL nucle...

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“…2E). Similar findings have been documented in rats and cats (28,29). The difference can be attributed both to differential inputs and to local circuit properties (30,31).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Transformation of the neural code for tactile detection from thalamus to cortex

Vázquez

Salinas

Romo

2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…This reward scheme, along with no punishment of false alarm report of catch trials, biased the rats towards a strategy of responding to stimulation under uncertainty conditions. In contrast with detectability of electrical stimulation of single tactile afferents, figure 1c-e shows that stimulation of single VPM neurons could not be behaviourally reported [30]. The rats' inability to detect this minute perturbation may be due to local neural circuitry of the thalamic nucleus, which lacks local recurrent excitatory connectivity [55,56] and thus means of signal amplification.…”

Section: (C) Nanostimulation In the Thalamusmentioning

confidence: 89%

What single-cell stimulation has told us about neural coding

Doron

Brecht

2015

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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One contribution of 15 to a theme issue 'Controlling brain activity to alter perception, behaviour and society'. In recent years, single-cell stimulation experiments have resulted in substantial progress towards directly linking single-cell activity to movement and sensation. Recent advances in electrical recording and stimulation techniques have enabled control of single neuron spiking in vivo and have contributed to our understanding of neuronal coding schemes in the brain. Here, we review single neuron stimulation effects in different brain structures and how they vary with artificially inserted spike patterns. We briefly compare single neuron stimulation with other brain stimulation techniques. A key advantage of single neuron stimulation is the precise control of the evoked spiking patterns. Systematically varying spike patterns and measuring evoked movements and sensations enables 'decoding' of the single-cell spike patterns and provides insights into the readout mechanisms of sensory and motor cortical spikes.

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“…These results favor the hypothesis that, at least under conditions akin to those tested here, the somatosensory thalamus behaves as a relay station of sensory information to cortex that is rather insensitive to additional cognitive components. Such cognitive processes are likely to develop and to be integrated with sensory information in circuits downstream from the somatosensory thalamus (2,12,22).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural coding and perceptual detection in the primate somatosensory thalamus

Vázquez

Zainos

Álvarez

et al. 2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The contribution of the sensory thalamus to perception and decision making is not well understood. We addressed this problem by recording single neurons in the ventral posterior lateral (VPL) nucleus of the somatosensory thalamus while trained monkeys judged the presence or absence of a vibrotactile stimulus of variable amplitude applied to the skin of a fingertip. We found that neurons in the VPL nucleus modulated their firing rate as a function of stimulus amplitude, and that such modulations accounted for the monkeys' overall psychophysical performance. These neural responses did not predict the animals' decision reports in individual trials, however. Moreover, the sensitivity to changes in stimulus amplitude was similar when the monkeys' performed the detection task and when they were not required to report stimulus detection. These results suggest that the primate somatosensory thalamus likely provides a reliable neural representation of the sensory input to the cerebral cortex, where sensory information is transformed and combined with other cognitive components associated with behavioral performance. choice probability | neurometrics | psychophysics D etection of a sensory stimulus arises from evoked neural activity starting in the sensory receptors (1) and spanning several subcortical relay stations up to the cortex (2). Previous studies have described the neural activity of relay neurons within the sensory thalamus and its association with cortical activity; however, most of these studies were performed in anesthetized animals (3-7). Only a few studies have recorded thalamic neural activity from behaving subjects (8-11). Thus, the relationship between neuronal activity in the sensory thalamus and a subject's performance is not clear. In the case of the primate somatosensory thalamus, it is not known how neurons in the primate ventral posterior lateral (VPL) nucleus encode tactile stimuli and impact the animal's psychophysical behavior.To further investigate this relationship, we recorded the activity of single neurons in the VPL nucleus while trained monkeys reported the presence or absence of a mechanical vibration of variable amplitude applied to the skin of a fingertip (2). This task allowed us to study how the firing activity that encodes features of the stimulus is related to the animal's psychophysical performance and decision making capacity. We found that VPL neurons with either quickly adapting (QA) or slowly adapting (SA) response properties modulate their firing rates as functions of stimulus amplitude. On average, these modulations accounted for the monkeys' detection performance, in that neural and behavioral sensitivities were statistically the same, although the sensitivity of most neurons was lower than that of the monkeys when relatively short integration windows were used to measure the rate modulations. Moreover, variations in the firing rate of VPL neurons did not predict the monkeys' perceptual judgments or motor reports. Finally, the sensitivity to changes in stimulus amplitude was...

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Behavioral Detectability of Single-Cell Stimulation in the Ventral Posterior Medial Nucleus of the Thalamus

Cited by 28 publications

References 46 publications

Transformation of the neural code for tactile detection from thalamus to cortex

Transformation of the neural code for tactile detection from thalamus to cortex

What single-cell stimulation has told us about neural coding

Neural coding and perceptual detection in the primate somatosensory thalamus

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