Coding by Neural Population Oscillations?

Investigators debate the extent to which neural populations use pairwise and higher-order statistical dependencies among neural responses to represent information about a visual stimulus. To study this issue, three statistical decoders were used to extract the information in the responses of model neurons about the binocular disparities present in simulated pairs of left-eye and right-eye images: (1) the full joint probability decoder considered all possible statistical relations among neural responses as potentially important; (2) the dependence tree decoder also considered all possible relations as potentially important, but it approximated high-order statistical correlations using a computationally tractable procedure; and (3) the independent response decoder, which assumed that neural responses are statistically independent, meaning that all correlations should be zero and thus can be ignored. Simulation results indicate that high-order correlations among model neuron responses contain significant information about binocular disparities and that the amount of this high-order information increases rapidly as a function of neural population size. Furthermore, the results highlight the potential importance of the dependence tree decoder to neuroscientists as a powerful but still practical way of approximating high-order correlations among neural responses.

Behavioral Triggers of Skin Conductance Responses and Their Neural Correlates in the Primate Amygdala

Journal of Neurophysiology ◽

10.1152/jn.91110.2008 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 101 (4) ◽

pp. 1749-1754 ◽

Cited By ~ 48

Author(s):

Christopher M. Laine ◽

Kevin M. Spitler ◽

Clayton P. Mosher ◽

Katalin M. Gothard

Keyword(s):

Skin Conductance ◽

Single Unit ◽

Population Level ◽

Emotional Reaction ◽

Neural Population ◽

Experimental Conditions ◽

Indirect Measure ◽

Skin Conductance Responses ◽

The Right ◽

Sympathetic Arousal

The amygdala plays a crucial role in evaluating the emotional significance of stimuli and in transforming the results of this evaluation into appropriate autonomic responses. Lesion and stimulation studies suggest involvement of the amygdala in the generation of the skin conductance response (SCR), which is an indirect measure of autonomic activity that has been associated with both emotion and attention. It is unclear if this involvement marks an emotional reaction to an external stimulus or sympathetic arousal regardless of its origin. We recorded skin conductance in parallel with single-unit activity from the right amygdala of two rhesus monkeys during a rewarded image viewing task and while the monkeys sat alone in a dimly lit room, drifting in and out of sleep. In both experimental conditions, we found similar SCR-related modulation of activity at the single-unit and neural population level. This suggests that the amygdala contributes to the production or modulation of SCRs regardless of the source of sympathetic arousal.

A category-free neural population supports evolving demands during decision-making

Nature Neuroscience ◽

10.1038/nn.3865 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 17 (12) ◽

pp. 1784-1792 ◽

Cited By ~ 255

Author(s):

David Raposo ◽

Matthew T Kaufman ◽

Anne K Churchland

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Neural Population

Expectation and Surprise Determine Neural Population Responses in the Ventral Visual Stream

Journal of Neuroscience ◽

10.1523/jneurosci.2770-10.2010 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 30 (49) ◽

pp. 16601-16608 ◽

Cited By ~ 185

Author(s):

T. Egner ◽

J. M. Monti ◽

C. Summerfield

Keyword(s):

Neural Population ◽

Visual Stream ◽

Population Responses ◽

Ventral Visual Stream

Reassessing optimal neural population codes with neurometric functions

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1015904108 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 108 (11) ◽

pp. 4423-4428 ◽

Cited By ~ 32

Author(s):

P. Berens ◽

A. S. Ecker ◽

S. Gerwinn ◽

A. S. Tolias ◽

M. Bethge

Keyword(s):

Neural Population ◽

Population Codes