Feedforward and feedback interactions between visual cortical areas use different population activity patterns

AbstractBrain function relies on the coordination of activity across multiple, recurrently connected, brain areas. For instance, sensory information encoded in early sensory areas is relayed to, and further processed by, higher cortical areas and then fed back. However, the way in which feedforward and feedback signaling interact with one another is incompletely understood. Here we investigate this question by leveraging simultaneous neuronal population recordings in early and midlevel visual areas (V1-V2 and V1-V4). Using a dimensionality reduction approach, we find that population interactions are feedforward-dominated shortly after stimulus onset and feedback-dominated during spontaneous activity. The population activity patterns most correlated across areas were distinct during feedforward- and feedback-dominated periods. These results suggest that feedforward and feedback signaling rely on separate “channels”, such that feedback signaling does not directly affect activity that is fed forward.

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Representational drift in the mouse visual cortex

10.1101/2020.10.05.327049 ◽

2020 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Daniel Deitch ◽

Alon Rubin ◽

Yaniv Ziv

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Activity Patterns ◽

Population Level ◽

Population Activity ◽

Cortical Areas ◽

Electrophysiological Recordings ◽

The Face ◽

Visual Cortical ◽

Mouse Visual Cortex ◽

Over Time

AbstractNeuronal representations in the hippocampus and related structures gradually change over time despite no changes in the environment or behavior. The extent to which such ‘representational drift’ occurs in sensory cortical areas and whether the hierarchy of information flow across areas affects neural-code stability have remained elusive. Here, we address these questions by analyzing large-scale optical and electrophysiological recordings from six visual cortical areas in behaving mice that were repeatedly presented with the same natural movies. We found representational drift over timescales spanning minutes to days across multiple visual areas. The drift was driven mostly by changes in individual cells’ activity rates, while their tuning changed to a lesser extent. Despite these changes, the structure of relationships between the population activity patterns remained stable and stereotypic, allowing robust maintenance of information over time. Such population-level organization may underlie stable visual perception in the face of continuous changes in neuronal responses.

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Dynamic causal communication channels between neocortical areas

10.1101/2021.06.28.449892 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Mitra Javadzadeh ◽

Sonja B Hofer

Keyword(s):

Sensory Information ◽

Communication Channels ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Population Activity ◽

V1 Neurons ◽

Cortical Areas ◽

Electrophysiological Recordings ◽

Causal Approach ◽

Visual Cortical ◽

Over Time

Dynamic pathways of information flow between distributed brain regions underlie the diversity of behaviour. However, it remains unclear how neuronal activity in one area causally influences ongoing population activity in another, and how such interactions change over time. Here we introduce a causal approach to quantify cortical interactions by pairing simultaneous electrophysiological recordings with neural perturbations. We found that the influence visual cortical areas had on each other was surprisingly variable over time. Both feedforward and feedback pathways reliably affected different subpopulations of target neurons at different moments during processing of a visual stimulus, resulting in dynamically rotating communication dimensions between the two cortical areas. The influence of feedback on primary visual cortex (V1) became even more dynamic when visual stimuli were associated with a reward, impacting different subsets of V1 neurons within tens of milliseconds. This, in turn, controlled the geometry of V1 population activity in a behaviourally relevant manner. Thus, distributed neural populations interact through dynamically reorganizing and context- dependent communication channels to evaluate sensory information.

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Linking sensory neurons to visually guided behavior: Relating MST activity to steering in a virtual environment

Visual Neuroscience ◽

10.1017/s0952523813000412 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 30 (5-6) ◽

pp. 315-330 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

SETH W. EGGER ◽

KENNETH H. BRITTEN

Keyword(s):

Cortical Neurons ◽

Traditional Approach ◽

Sensory System ◽

Sensory Information ◽

Neuronal Population ◽

Difficult Problem ◽

Lower Envelope ◽

Visually Guided ◽

Medial Superior Temporal ◽

Visual Cortical

AbstractMany complex behaviors rely on guidance from sensations. To perform these behaviors, the motor system must decode information relevant to the task from the sensory system. However, identifying the neurons responsible for encoding the appropriate sensory information remains a difficult problem for neurophysiologists. A key step toward identifying candidate systems is finding neurons or groups of neurons capable of representing the stimuli adequately to support behavior. A traditional approach involves quantitatively measuring the performance of single neurons and comparing this to the performance of the animal. One of the strongest pieces of evidence in support of a neuronal population being involved in a behavioral task comes from the signals being sufficient to support behavior. Numerous experiments using perceptual decision tasks show that visual cortical neurons in many areas have this property. However, most visually guided behaviors are not categorical but continuous and dynamic. In this article, we review the concept of sufficiency and the tools used to measure neural and behavioral performance. We show how concepts from information theory can be used to measure the ongoing performance of both neurons and animal behavior. Finally, we apply these tools to dorsal medial superior temporal (MSTd) neurons and demonstrate that these neurons can represent stimuli important to navigation to a distant goal. We find that MSTd neurons represent ongoing steering error in a virtual-reality steering task. Although most individual neurons were insufficient to support the behavior, some very nearly matched the animal’s estimation performance. These results are consistent with many results from perceptual experiments and in line with the predictions of Mountcastle’s “lower envelope principle.”

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Routing information flow by separate neural synchrony frequencies allows for “functionally labeled lines” in higher primate cortex

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1819827116 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 116 (25) ◽

pp. 12506-12515 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Mohammad Bagher Khamechian ◽

Vladislav Kozyrev ◽

Stefan Treue ◽

Moein Esghaei ◽

Mohammad Reza Daliri

Keyword(s):

Information Flow ◽

Information Transfer ◽

Sensory Information ◽

Spike Timing ◽

Oscillatory Activity ◽

Attention Task ◽

Cortical Areas ◽

High Gamma ◽

Ventral Pathway ◽

Visual Cortical

Efficient transfer of sensory information to higher (motor or associative) areas in primate visual cortical areas is crucial for transforming sensory input into behavioral actions. Dynamically increasing the level of coordination between single neurons has been suggested as an important contributor to this efficiency. We propose that differences between the functional coordination in different visual pathways might be used to unambiguously identify the source of input to the higher areas, ensuring a proper routing of the information flow. Here we determined the level of coordination between neurons in area MT in macaque visual cortex in a visual attention task via the strength of synchronization between the neurons’ spike timing relative to the phase of oscillatory activities in local field potentials. In contrast to reports on the ventral visual pathway, we observed the synchrony of spikes only in the range of high gamma (180 to 220 Hz), rather than gamma (40 to 70 Hz) (as reported previously) to predict the animal’s reaction speed. This supports a mechanistic role of the phase of high-gamma oscillatory activity in dynamically modulating the efficiency of neuronal information transfer. In addition, for inputs to higher cortical areas converging from the dorsal and ventral pathway, the distinct frequency bands of these inputs can be leveraged to preserve the identity of the input source. In this way source-specific oscillatory activity in primate cortex can serve to establish and maintain “functionally labeled lines” for dynamically adjusting cortical information transfer and multiplexing converging sensory signals.

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Neural Mechanisms of Spatial Attention in the Visual Thalamus

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199675111.013.013 ◽

2014 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Yuri B. Saalmann ◽

Sabine Kastner

Keyword(s):

Selective Attention ◽

Visual Information ◽

Thalamic Nucleus ◽

Sensory Information ◽

Relevant Information ◽

Neural Mechanisms ◽

First Order ◽

Visual Thalamus ◽

Cortical Areas ◽

Visual Cortical

Neural mechanisms of selective attention route behaviourally relevant information through brain networks for detailed processing. These attention mechanisms are classically viewed as being solely implemented in the cortex, relegating the thalamus to a passive relay of sensory information. However, this passive view of the thalamus is being revised in light of recent studies supporting an important role for the thalamus in selective attention. Evidence suggests that the first-order thalamic nucleus, the lateral geniculate nucleus, regulates the visual information transmitted from the retina to visual cortex, while the higher-order thalamic nucleus, the pulvinar, regulates information transmission between visual cortical areas, according to attentional demands. This chapter discusses how modulation of thalamic responses, switching the response mode of thalamic neurons, and changes in neural synchrony across thalamo-cortical networks contribute to selective attention.

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Spatio-temporal patterns of population responses in the visual cortex under Isoflurane: from wakefulness to loss of consciousness

10.1101/2020.07.20.212472 ◽

2020 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Shany Nivinsky Margalit ◽

Neta Gery Golomb ◽

Omer Tsur ◽

Aeyal Raz ◽

Hamutal Slovin

Keyword(s):

Visual Stimulation ◽

Neuronal Population ◽

Loss Of Consciousness ◽

Population Activity ◽

Population Responses ◽

Anesthetic Drugs ◽

Visual Areas ◽

Visual Cortices ◽

Evoked Activity ◽

Higher Visual Areas

AbstractAnesthetic drugs are widely used in medicine and research to mediate loss of consciousness (LOC). Despite the vast use of anesthesia, how LOC affects cortical sensory processing and the underlying neural circuitry, is not well understood. We measured neuronal population activity in the visual cortices of awake and isoflurane anesthetized mice and compared the visually evoked responses under different levels of consciousness. We used voltage-sensitive dye imaging (VSDI) to characterize the temporal and spatial properties of cortical responses to visual stimuli over a range of states from wakefulness to deep anesthesia. VSDI enabled measuring the neuronal population responses at high spatial (meso-scale) and temporal resolution from several visual regions (V1, extrastiate-lateral (ESL) and extrastiate-medial (ESM)) simultaneously. We found that isoflurane has multiple effects on the population evoked response that augmented with anesthetic depth, where the largest changes occurred at LOC. Isoflurane reduced the response amplitude and prolonged the latency of response in all areas. In addition, the intra-areal spatial spread of the visually evoked activity decreased. During visual stimulation, intra-areal and inter-areal correlation between neuronal populations decreased with increasing doses of isoflurane. Finally, while in V1 the majority of changes occurred at higher doses of isoflurane, higher visual areas showed marked changes at lower doses of isoflurane. In conclusion, our results demonstrate a reverse hierarchy shutdown of the visual cortices regions: low-dose isoflurane diminishes the visually evoked activity in higher visual areas before lower order areas and cause a reduction in inter-areal connectivity leading to a disconnected network.

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Continuous multiplexed population representations of task context in the mouse primary visual cortex

10.1101/2021.04.20.440666 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Marton Albert Hajnal ◽

Duy Tran ◽

Michael Einstein ◽

Mauricio Vallejo Martelo ◽

Karen Safaryan ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Visual Cortex ◽

Primary Visual Cortex ◽

Activity Patterns ◽

Visual Stimuli ◽

Stimulus Onset ◽

Decision Task ◽

Cognitive Variables ◽

Task Context ◽

Population Activity ◽

V1 Neurons

Primary visual cortex (V1) neurons integrate motor and multisensory information with visual inputs during sensory processing. However, whether V1 neurons also integrate and encode higher-order cognitive variables is less understood. We trained mice to perform a context-dependent cross-modal decision task where the interpretation of identical audio-visual stimuli depends on task context. We performed silicon probe population recordings of neuronal activity in V1 during task performance and showed that task context (whether the animal should base its decision on visual or auditory stimuli) can be decoded during both intertrial intervals and stimulus presentations. Context and visual stimuli were represented in overlapping populations but were orthogonal in the population activity space. Context representation was not static but displayed distinctive dynamics upon stimulus onset and offset. Thus, activity patterns in V1 independently represent visual stimuli and cognitive variables relevant to task execution.

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Biological variation in the sizes, shapes and locations of visual cortical areas in the mouse

10.1101/414698 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jack Waters ◽

Eric Lee ◽

Nathalie Gaudreault ◽

Fiona Griffin ◽

Jerome Lecoq ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Visual Cortex ◽

Visual Information ◽

Biological Variation ◽

Measurement Noise ◽

Cortical Areas ◽

Retinotopic Maps ◽

Visual Areas ◽

Visual Cortical ◽

Cortical Visual Areas ◽

Processing Of Visual Information

ABSTRACTVisual cortex is organized into discrete sub-regions or areas that are arranged into a hierarchy and serve different functions in the processing of visual information. In our previous work, we noted that retinotopic maps of cortical visual areas differed between mice, but did not quantify these differences or determine the relative contributions of biological variation and measurement noise. Here we quantify the biological variation in the size, shape and locations of 11 visual areas in the mouse. We find that there is substantial biological variation in the sizes of visual areas, with some visual areas varying in size by two-fold across the population of mice.

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The N2pc as an Electrophysiological Correlate of Attention in Change Blindness

Journal of Psychophysiology ◽

10.1027/0269-8803.23.2.43 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 23 (2) ◽

pp. 43-51 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Andrea Schankin ◽

Dirk Hagemann ◽

Edmund Wascher

Keyword(s):

Change Blindness ◽

Visual Awareness ◽

Neural Correlates ◽

Stimulus Onset ◽

Attentional Processing ◽

Electrophysiological Activity ◽

Cortical Areas ◽

Physically Identical ◽

Visual Cortical ◽

Electrophysiological Correlate

Changes between two successively presented pictures are hard to detect when their presentation is interrupted by a blank (change blindness). This task is well established for investigating the neural correlates of visual awareness. It allows the comparison of electrophysiological activity evoked by physically identical trials in which the change was detected versus trials in which the change remained unnoticed. One possible correlate of aware processing is the N2pc component, an increased negative activity, contralateral to a processed stimulus between 200–300 ms after stimulus onset. However, this component has been also assigned to the allocation of attention. In two experiments, an N2pc was observed for detected changes. This component was markedly reduced for undetected changes and even more if participants reported a change that was not present (imagined change). These results suggest that the N2pc rather reflects attentional processing of stimuli in visual cortical areas than the actual aware representation.

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Increased influence of periphery on central visual processing in humans during walking

10.1101/382093 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Liyu Cao ◽

Barbara Händel

Keyword(s):

Sensory Processing ◽

Visual Processing ◽

Sensory Information ◽

Human Perception ◽

Neural Responses ◽

Natural Behaviour ◽

Visual Areas ◽

Sensory Information Processing ◽

Visual Cortical ◽

Behavioural Evidence

AbstractCognitive processes are almost exclusively investigated under highly controlled settings while voluntary body movements are suppressed. However, recent animal work suggests differences in sensory processing between movement states by showing drastically changed neural responses in early visual areas between locomotion and stillness. Does locomotion also modulate visual cortical activity in humans and what are its perceptual consequences? Here, we present converging neurophysiological and behavioural evidence that walking leads to an increased influence of peripheral stimuli on central visual input. This modulation of visual processing due to walking is encompassed by a change in alpha oscillations, which is suggestive of an attentional shift to the periphery during walking. Overall, our study shows that strategies of sensory information processing can differ between movement states. This finding further demonstrates that a comprehensive understanding of human perception and cognition critically depends on the consideration of natural behaviour.

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