Spatial Attention Reduces Burstiness in Macaque Visual Cortical Area MST

Xue, Cheng; Kaping, Daniel; Ray, Sonia; Krishna, B. Suresh; Treue, Stefan

doi:10.1093/cercor/bhw326

Cited by 20 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 42 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The magnitude of a given gain factor represents the similarity between the stimulus preferences of the neuron and the currently attended features. In this model a selective enhancement or suppression of individual stimuli (based either on the stimulus' spatial location or its features Xue et al, 2016) is achieved on the population level because attention to a given feature increases the responses of all neurons preferring the same or similar features. In the TVA, the gain factor in question is the multiplicative perceptual bias toward feature i (β i ), which is applied to neurons that are coding feature i .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neurons in Primate Visual Cortex Alternate between Responses to Multiple Stimuli in Their Receptive Field

Kozyrev

Kyllingsbæk

et al. 2016

Front. Comput. Neurosci.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A fundamental question concerning representation of the visual world in our brain is how a cortical cell responds when presented with more than a single stimulus. We find supportive evidence that most cells presented with a pair of stimuli respond predominantly to one stimulus at a time, rather than a weighted average response. Traditionally, the firing rate is assumed to be a weighted average of the firing rates to the individual stimuli (response-averaging model) (Bundesen et al., 2005). Here, we also evaluate a probability-mixing model (Bundesen et al., 2005), where neurons temporally multiplex the responses to the individual stimuli. This provides a mechanism by which the representational identity of multiple stimuli in complex visual scenes can be maintained despite the large receptive fields in higher extrastriate visual cortex in primates. We compare the two models through analysis of data from single cells in the middle temporal visual area (MT) of rhesus monkeys when presented with two separate stimuli inside their receptive field with attention directed to one of the two stimuli or outside the receptive field. The spike trains were modeled by stochastic point processes, including memory effects of past spikes and attentional effects, and statistical model selection between the two models was performed by information theoretic measures as well as the predictive accuracy of the models. As an auxiliary measure, we also tested for uni- or multimodality in interspike interval distributions, and performed a correlation analysis of simultaneously recorded pairs of neurons, to evaluate population behavior.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neurons in Primate Visual Cortex Alternate between Responses to Multiple Stimuli in Their Receptive Field

Kozyrev

Kyllingsbæk

et al. 2016

Front. Comput. Neurosci.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Thalamic bursts have a particularly strong effect on the cortex, probably increasing the saliency of the signal to “wake-up” the cortex. Cortical structures might use this “wake-up” function of bursts too: the “burstiness” of layer 4 and area MT pyramidal cells in macaque visual cortex decreases with visual attention (Anderson et al, 2013 ; Xue et al, 2017 ) and in superficial cortical layers, bursts of a single neuron can change the global network state (Li et al, 2009 ).…”

Section: Functional Meaning Of Burstsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural Coding With Bursts—Current State and Future Perspectives

Zeldenrust

Wadman

Englitz

2018

Front. Comput. Neurosci.

150

132

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Neuronal action potentials or spikes provide a long-range, noise-resistant means of communication between neurons. As point processes single spikes contain little information in themselves, i.e., outside the context of spikes from other neurons. Moreover, they may fail to cross a synapse. A burst, which consists of a short, high frequency train of spikes, will more reliably cross a synapse, increasing the likelihood of eliciting a postsynaptic spike, depending on the specific short-term plasticity at that synapse. Both the number and the temporal pattern of spikes in a burst provide a coding space that lies within the temporal integration realm of single neurons. Bursts have been observed in many species, including the non-mammalian, and in brain regions that range from subcortical to cortical. Despite their widespread presence and potential relevance, the uncertainties of how to classify bursts seems to have limited the research into the coding possibilities for bursts. The present series of research articles provides new insights into the relevance and interpretation of bursts across different neural circuits, and new methods for their analysis. Here, we provide a succinct introduction to the history of burst coding and an overview of recent work on this topic.

show abstract

“…Some have suggested that a unified attention system exists that treats stimulus location (and possibly object identity) as stimulus 'features', alongside motion direction (see Maunsell and Treue, 2006), although recent work suggests that spatial and feature-based attention may, in part at least, rely on different underlying neural mechanisms (Xue et al, 2017). Our metaanalysis suggests that simple, feature-based attention has much stronger effects on motion adaptation than spatial attention, or higher-level 'surface-based' attention: the largest effects of attention are seen for coherently translating stimuli, that maximise the effects of featurebased attention.…”

Section: Relationship To Neuroimagingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Motion adaptation and attention: A critical review and meta-analysis

Bartlett

Graf

Hedger

et al. 2019

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The motion aftereffect (MAE) provides a behavioural probe into the mechanisms underlying motion perception, and has been used to study the effects of attention on motion processing. Visual attention can enhance detection and discrimination of selected visual signals. However, the relationship between attention and motion processing remains contentious: not all studies find that attention increases MAEs. Our meta-analysis reveals several factors that explain superficially discrepant findings. Across studies (37 independent samples, 76 effects) motion adaptation was significantly and substantially enhanced by attention (Cohen's d=1.12, p<.0001). The effect more than doubled when adapting to translating (vs. expanding or rotating) motion. Other factors affecting the attention-MAE relationship included stimulus size, eccentricity and speed. By considering these behavioural analyses alongside neurophysiological work, we conclude that featurebased (rather than spatial, or object-based) attention is the biggest driver of sensory adaptation. Comparisons between naïve and non-naïve observers, different response paradigms, and assessment of 'file-drawer effects' indicate that neither response bias nor publication bias are likely to have significantly inflated the estimated effect of attention.

show abstract

Spatial Attention Reduces Burstiness in Macaque Visual Cortical Area MST

Cited by 20 publications

References 42 publications

Neurons in Primate Visual Cortex Alternate between Responses to Multiple Stimuli in Their Receptive Field

Neurons in Primate Visual Cortex Alternate between Responses to Multiple Stimuli in Their Receptive Field

Neural Coding With Bursts—Current State and Future Perspectives

Motion adaptation and attention: A critical review and meta-analysis

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About