1
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Deister CA, Moore AI, Voigts J, Bechek S, Lichtin R, Brown TC, Moore CI. Neocortical inhibitory imbalance predicts successful sensory detection. Cell Rep 2024; 43:114233. [PMID: 38905102 DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2024.114233] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/16/2021] [Revised: 07/17/2023] [Accepted: 04/26/2024] [Indexed: 06/23/2024] Open
Abstract
Perceptual success depends on fast-spiking, parvalbumin-positive interneurons (FS/PVs). However, competing theories of optimal rate and correlation in pyramidal (PYR) firing make opposing predictions regarding the underlying FS/PV dynamics. We addressed this with population calcium imaging of FS/PVs and putative PYR neurons during threshold detection. In primary somatosensory and visual neocortex, a distinct PYR subset shows increased rate and spike-count correlations on detected trials ("hits"), while most show no rate change and decreased correlations. A larger fraction of FS/PVs predicts hits with either rate increases or decreases. Using computational modeling, we found that inhibitory imbalance, created by excitatory "feedback" and interactions between FS/PV pools, can account for the data. Rate-decreasing FS/PVs increase rate and correlation in a PYR subset, while rate-increasing FS/PVs reduce correlations and offset enhanced excitation in PYR neurons. These findings indicate that selection of informative PYR ensembles, through transient inhibitory imbalance, is a common motif of optimal neocortical processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christopher A Deister
- Department of Neuroscience and Carney Institute for Brain Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
| | - Alexander I Moore
- Department of Neuroscience and Carney Institute for Brain Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
| | - Jakob Voigts
- Department of Neuroscience and Carney Institute for Brain Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA; Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, VA, USA
| | - Sophia Bechek
- Department of Neuroscience and Carney Institute for Brain Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
| | - Rebecca Lichtin
- Department of Neuroscience and Carney Institute for Brain Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
| | - Tyler C Brown
- Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Christopher I Moore
- Department of Neuroscience and Carney Institute for Brain Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.
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2
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van Ede F, Nobre AC. A Neural Decision Signal during Internal Sampling from Working Memory in Humans. J Neurosci 2024; 44:e1475232024. [PMID: 38538144 PMCID: PMC11079964 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.1475-23.2024] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/04/2023] [Revised: 01/11/2024] [Accepted: 02/16/2024] [Indexed: 05/12/2024] Open
Abstract
How humans transform sensory information into decisions that steer purposeful behavior is a central question in psychology and neuroscience that is traditionally investigated during the sampling of external environmental signals. The decision-making framework of gradual information sampling toward a decision has also been proposed to apply when sampling internal sensory evidence from working memory. However, neural evidence for this proposal remains scarce. Here we show (using scalp EEG in male and female human volunteers) that sampling internal visual representations from working memory elicits a scalp EEG potential associated with gradual evidence accumulation-the central parietal positivity. Consistent with an evolving decision process, we show how this signal (1) scales with the time participants require to reach a decision about the cued memory content and (2) is amplified when having to decide among multiple contents in working memory. These results bring the electrophysiology of decision-making into the domain of working memory and suggest that variability in memory-guided behavior may be driven (at least in part) by variations in the sampling of our inner mental contents.
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Affiliation(s)
- Freek van Ede
- Institute for Brain and Behavior Amsterdam, Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 1081 BT, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7JX, United Kingdom
| | - Anna C Nobre
- Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7JX, United Kingdom
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6GG, United Kingdom
- Wu Tsai Institute and Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06510
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3
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Boboeva V, Pezzotta A, Clopath C, Akrami A. Unifying network model links recency and central tendency biases in working memory. eLife 2024; 12:RP86725. [PMID: 38656279 DOI: 10.7554/elife.86725] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 04/26/2024] Open
Abstract
The central tendency bias, or contraction bias, is a phenomenon where the judgment of the magnitude of items held in working memory appears to be biased toward the average of past observations. It is assumed to be an optimal strategy by the brain and commonly thought of as an expression of the brain's ability to learn the statistical structure of sensory input. On the other hand, recency biases such as serial dependence are also commonly observed and are thought to reflect the content of working memory. Recent results from an auditory delayed comparison task in rats suggest that both biases may be more related than previously thought: when the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) was silenced, both short-term and contraction biases were reduced. By proposing a model of the circuit that may be involved in generating the behavior, we show that a volatile working memory content susceptible to shifting to the past sensory experience - producing short-term sensory history biases - naturally leads to contraction bias. The errors, occurring at the level of individual trials, are sampled from the full distribution of the stimuli and are not due to a gradual shift of the memory toward the sensory distribution's mean. Our results are consistent with a broad set of behavioral findings and provide predictions of performance across different stimulus distributions and timings, delay intervals, as well as neuronal dynamics in putative working memory areas. Finally, we validate our model by performing a set of human psychophysics experiments of an auditory parametric working memory task.
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Affiliation(s)
- Vezha Boboeva
- Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, University College London, London, United Kingdom
- Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Alberto Pezzotta
- Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London, London, United Kingdom
- The Francis Crick Institute, London, United Kingdom
| | - Claudia Clopath
- Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, University College London, London, United Kingdom
- Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Athena Akrami
- Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, University College London, London, United Kingdom
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4
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Kay K, Biderman N, Khajeh R, Beiran M, Cueva CJ, Shohamy D, Jensen G, Wei XX, Ferrera VP, Abbott LF. Emergent neural dynamics and geometry for generalization in a transitive inference task. PLoS Comput Biol 2024; 20:e1011954. [PMID: 38662797 PMCID: PMC11125559 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011954] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/26/2023] [Revised: 05/24/2024] [Accepted: 02/28/2024] [Indexed: 05/25/2024] Open
Abstract
Relational cognition-the ability to infer relationships that generalize to novel combinations of objects-is fundamental to human and animal intelligence. Despite this importance, it remains unclear how relational cognition is implemented in the brain due in part to a lack of hypotheses and predictions at the levels of collective neural activity and behavior. Here we discovered, analyzed, and experimentally tested neural networks (NNs) that perform transitive inference (TI), a classic relational task (if A > B and B > C, then A > C). We found NNs that (i) generalized perfectly, despite lacking overt transitive structure prior to training, (ii) generalized when the task required working memory (WM), a capacity thought to be essential to inference in the brain, (iii) emergently expressed behaviors long observed in living subjects, in addition to a novel order-dependent behavior, and (iv) expressed different task solutions yielding alternative behavioral and neural predictions. Further, in a large-scale experiment, we found that human subjects performing WM-based TI showed behavior inconsistent with a class of NNs that characteristically expressed an intuitive task solution. These findings provide neural insights into a classical relational ability, with wider implications for how the brain realizes relational cognition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kenneth Kay
- Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
- Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
- Grossman Center for the Statistics of Mind, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
| | - Natalie Biderman
- Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
- Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
| | - Ramin Khajeh
- Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
- Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
| | - Manuel Beiran
- Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
- Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
| | - Christopher J. Cueva
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America
| | - Daphna Shohamy
- Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
- Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
- The Kavli Institute for Brain Science, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
| | - Greg Jensen
- Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
- Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York, United States of America
- Department of Psychology at Reed College, Portland, Oregon, United States of America
| | - Xue-Xin Wei
- Departments of Neuroscience and Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, United States of America
| | - Vincent P. Ferrera
- Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
- Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York, United States of America
- Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York, United States of America
| | - LF Abbott
- Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
- Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
- The Kavli Institute for Brain Science, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
- Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York, United States of America
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Mozumder R, Chung S, Li S, Constantinidis C. Contributions of narrow- and broad-spiking prefrontal and parietal neurons on working memory tasks. Front Syst Neurosci 2024; 18:1365622. [PMID: 38577690 PMCID: PMC10991738 DOI: 10.3389/fnsys.2024.1365622] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/04/2024] [Accepted: 03/11/2024] [Indexed: 04/06/2024] Open
Abstract
Neurons that generate persistent activity in the primate dorsolateral prefrontal and posterior parietal cortex have been shown to be predictive of behavior in working memory tasks, though subtle differences between them have been observed in how information is represented. The role of different neuron types in each of these areas has not been investigated at depth. We thus compared the activity of neurons classified as narrow-spiking, putative interneurons, and broad-spiking, putative pyramidal neurons, recorded from the dorsolateral prefrontal and posterior parietal cortex of male monkeys, to analyze their role in the maintenance of working memory. Our results demonstrate that narrow-spiking neurons are active during a range of tasks and generate persistent activity during the delay period over which stimuli need to be maintained in memory. Furthermore, the activity of narrow-spiking neurons was predictive of the subject's recall no less than that of broad-spiking neurons, which are exclusively projection neurons in the cortex. Our results show that putative interneurons play an active role during the maintenance of working memory and shed light onto the fundamental neural circuits that determine subjects' memories and judgments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rana Mozumder
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
| | - Sophia Chung
- Neuroscience Program, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
| | - Sihai Li
- Department of Neurobiology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States
| | - Christos Constantinidis
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
- Neuroscience Program, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
- Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, United States
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Lee DH, Chung CK, Kim JS, Ryun S. Unraveling tactile categorization and decision-making in the subregions of supramarginal gyrus via direct cortical stimulation. Clin Neurophysiol 2024; 158:16-26. [PMID: 38134532 DOI: 10.1016/j.clinph.2023.12.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/06/2023] [Revised: 11/23/2023] [Accepted: 12/08/2023] [Indexed: 12/24/2023]
Abstract
OBJECTIVE This study aims to investigate the potential of direct cortical stimulation (DCS) to modulate tactile categorization and decision-making, as well as to identify the specific locations where these cognitive functions occur. METHODS We analyzed behavioral changes in three epilepsy patients with implanted electrodes using electrocorticography (ECoG) and a vibrotactile discrimination task. DCS was applied to investigate its impact on tactile categorization and decision-making processes. We determined the precise location of the electrodes where each cognitive function was modulated. RESULTS This functional discrimination was related with gamma band activity from ECoG. DCS selectively affected either tactile categorization or decision-making processes. Tactile categorization was modulated by stimulating the rostral part of the supramarginal gyrus, while decision-making was modulated by stimulating the caudal part. CONCLUSIONS DCS can enhance cognitive processes and map brain regions responsible for tactile categorization and decision-making within the supramarginal gyrus. This study also demonstrates that DCS and the gamma activity of ECoG can concordantly identify the detailed brain mapping in a tactile process compared to other functional neuroimaging. SIGNIFICANCE The combination of DCS and ECoG gamma activity provides a more nuanced and detailed understanding of brain function than traditional neuroimaging techniques alone.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dong Hyeok Lee
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Republic of Korea
| | - Chun Kee Chung
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Republic of Korea; Neuroscience Research Institute, Medical Research Center, College of Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul 03080, Republic of Korea; Department of Neurosurgery, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul 03080, Republic of Korea.
| | - June Sic Kim
- The Research Institute of Basic Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Republic of Korea
| | - Seokyun Ryun
- Neuroscience Research Institute, Medical Research Center, College of Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul 03080, Republic of Korea
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7
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Lee DH, Kim JS, Ryun S, Chung CK. Discrete tactile feature comparison subprocess in human brain during a decision-making process. Cortex 2024; 171:383-396. [PMID: 38101274 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2023.11.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/18/2023] [Revised: 10/03/2023] [Accepted: 11/02/2023] [Indexed: 12/17/2023]
Abstract
From sensory input to motor action, encoded sensory features flow sequentially along cortical networks for decision-making. Despite numerous studies probing the decision-making process, the subprocess that compares encoded sensory features before making a decision has not been fully elucidated in humans. In this study, we investigated sensory feature comparison by presenting two different tasks (a discrimination task, in which participants made decisions by comparing two sequential tactile stimuli; and a detection task, in which participants responded to the second tactile stimulus in two sequential stimuli) to epilepsy patients while recording electrocorticography (ECoG). By comparing tactile-specific gamma band (30-200 Hz) power between the two tasks, the decision-making process was divided into three subprocesses-categorization, comparison, and decision-consistent with a previous study (Heekeren et al., 2004). These subprocesses occurred sequentially in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, premotor cortex, secondary somatosensory cortex, and parietal lobe. Gamma power showed two different patterns of correlation with response time. In the inferior parietal lobule (IPL), there was a negative correlation. This means that as gamma power increased, response time decreased. In the secondary somatosensory cortex (S2), there was a positive correlation. Here, as gamma power increased, response time also increased. These results indicate that the IPL and S2 encode tactile feature comparison differently. Our connectivity analysis showed that the S2 transmitted tactile information to the IPL. Our findings suggest that multiple areas in the parietal lobe encode sensory feature comparison differently before making a decision.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dong Hyeok Lee
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - June Sic Kim
- The Research Institute of Basic Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Seokyun Ryun
- Neuroscience Research Institute, Medical Research Center, College of Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Chun Kee Chung
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea; Neuroscience Research Institute, Medical Research Center, College of Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea; Department of Neurosurgery, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
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8
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Rabe F, Kikkert S, Wenderoth N. Performing a vibrotactile discrimination task modulates finger representations in primary somatosensory cortex. J Neurophysiol 2023; 130:1015-1027. [PMID: 37671429 PMCID: PMC10649835 DOI: 10.1152/jn.00428.2022] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/11/2022] [Revised: 08/29/2023] [Accepted: 08/31/2023] [Indexed: 09/07/2023] Open
Abstract
It is well established that vibrotactile stimuli are represented in somatotopic maps. However, less is known about whether these somatotopic representations are modulated by task demands and maybe even in the absence of tactile input. Here, we used a vibrotactile discrimination task as a tool to investigate these questions in further detail. Participants were required to actively perceive and process tactile stimuli in comparison to a no-task control condition where identical stimuli were passively perceived (no-memory condition). Importantly, both vibrotactile stimuli were either applied to the right index or little finger, allowing us to investigate whether cognitive task demands shape finger representations in primary somatosensory cortex (S1). Using multivoxel pattern analysis and representational similarity analysis, we found that S1 finger representations were more distinct during the memory than the no-memory condition. Interestingly, this effect was not only observed while tactile stimuli were presented but also during the delay period (i.e., in the absence of tactile stimulation). Our findings imply that when individuals are required to focus on tactile stimuli, retain them in their memory, and engage in active processing of distinctive stimulus features, this exerts a modulatory effect on the finger representations present in S1.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Using multivoxel pattern analysis, we found that discrimination task demands shape finger representations in the contralateral primary somatosensory cortex (S1), and that somatotopic representations are modulated by task demands not only during tactile stimulation but also to a certain extent in the absence of tactile input.
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Affiliation(s)
- Finn Rabe
- Neural Control of Movement Laboratory, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Sanne Kikkert
- Neural Control of Movement Laboratory, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Neuroscience Center Zurich (ZNZ), ETH Zurich and University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Nicole Wenderoth
- Neural Control of Movement Laboratory, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Spinal Cord Injury Center, Balgrist University Hospital, University of Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
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9
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Li B, Zhang C, Cao L, Chen P, Liu T, Gao H, Wang L, Yan B, Tong L. Brain Functional Representation of Highly Occluded Object Recognition. Brain Sci 2023; 13:1387. [PMID: 37891756 PMCID: PMC10605645 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci13101387] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/26/2023] [Revised: 09/23/2023] [Accepted: 09/27/2023] [Indexed: 10/29/2023] Open
Abstract
Recognizing highly occluded objects is believed to arise from the interaction between the brain's vision and cognition-controlling areas, although supporting neuroimaging data are currently limited. To explore the neural mechanism during this activity, we conducted an occlusion object recognition experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). During magnet resonance examinations, 66 subjects engaged in object recognition tasks with three different occlusion degrees. Generalized linear model (GLM) analysis showed that the activation degree of the occipital lobe (inferior occipital gyrus, middle occipital gyrus, and occipital fusiform gyrus) and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) was related to the occlusion degree of the objects. Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) further unearthed a considerable surge in classification precision when dACC activation was incorporated as a feature. This suggested the combined role of dACC and the occipital lobe in occluded object recognition tasks. Moreover, psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis disclosed that functional connectivity (FC) between the dACC and the occipital lobe was enhanced with increased occlusion, highlighting the necessity of FC between these two brain regions in effectively identifying exceedingly occluded objects. In conclusion, these findings contribute to understanding the neural mechanisms of highly occluded object recognition, augmenting our appreciation of how the brain manages incomplete visual data.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | - Li Tong
- Henan Key Laboratory of Imaging and Intelligent Processing, PLA Strategic Support Force Information Engineering University, Zhengzhou 450001, China; (B.L.); (C.Z.); (T.L.)
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10
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Nocon JC, Witter J, Gritton H, Han X, Houghton C, Sen K. A robust and compact population code for competing sounds in auditory cortex. J Neurophysiol 2023; 130:775-787. [PMID: 37646080 PMCID: PMC10642980 DOI: 10.1152/jn.00148.2023] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/10/2023] [Revised: 08/22/2023] [Accepted: 08/24/2023] [Indexed: 09/01/2023] Open
Abstract
Cortical circuits encoding sensory information consist of populations of neurons, yet how information aggregates via pooling individual cells remains poorly understood. Such pooling may be particularly important in noisy settings where single-neuron encoding is degraded. One example is the cocktail party problem, with competing sounds from multiple spatial locations. How populations of neurons in auditory cortex code competing sounds have not been previously investigated. Here, we apply a novel information-theoretic approach to estimate information in populations of neurons in mouse auditory cortex about competing sounds from multiple spatial locations, including both summed population (SP) and labeled line (LL) codes. We find that a small subset of neurons is sufficient to nearly maximize mutual information over different spatial configurations, with the labeled line code outperforming the summed population code and approaching information levels attained in the absence of competing stimuli. Finally, information in the labeled line code increases with spatial separation between target and masker, in correspondence with behavioral results on spatial release from masking in humans and animals. Taken together, our results reveal that a compact population of neurons in auditory cortex provides a robust code for competing sounds from different spatial locations.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Little is known about how populations of neurons within cortical circuits encode sensory stimuli in the presence of competing stimuli at other spatial locations. Here, we investigate this problem in auditory cortex using a recently proposed information-theoretic approach. We find a small subset of neurons nearly maximizes information about target sounds in the presence of competing maskers, approaching information levels for isolated stimuli, and provides a noise-robust code for sounds in a complex auditory scene.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jian Carlo Nocon
- Neurophotonics Center, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- Center for Systems Neuroscience, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- Hearing Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
| | - Jake Witter
- Department of Computer Science, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
| | - Howard Gritton
- Department of Comparative Biosciences, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, United States
- Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, United States
| | - Xue Han
- Neurophotonics Center, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- Center for Systems Neuroscience, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- Hearing Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
| | - Conor Houghton
- Department of Computer Science, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
| | - Kamal Sen
- Neurophotonics Center, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- Center for Systems Neuroscience, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- Hearing Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
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11
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Breitinger E, Dundon NM, Pokorny L, Wunram HL, Roessner V, Bender S. Contingent negative variation to tactile stimuli - differences in anticipatory and preparatory processes between participants with and without blindness. Cereb Cortex 2023; 33:7582-7594. [PMID: 36977633 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhad062] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/30/2022] [Revised: 02/09/2023] [Accepted: 02/10/2023] [Indexed: 03/30/2023] Open
Abstract
People who are blind demonstrate remarkable abilities within the spared senses and compensatory enhancement of cognitive skills, underscored by substantial plastic reorganization in relevant neural areas. However, little is known about whether people with blindness form top-down models of the world on short timescales more efficiently to guide goal-oriented behavior. This electroencephalography study investigates this hypothesis at the neurophysiological level, focusing on contingent negative variation (CNV) as a marker of anticipatory and preparatory processes prior to expected events. In sum, 20 participants with blindness and 27 sighted participants completed a classic CNV task and a memory CNV task, both containing tactile stimuli to exploit the expertise of the former group. Although the reaction times in the classic CNV task did not differ between groups, participants who are blind reached higher performance rates in the memory task. This superior performance co-occurred with a distinct neurophysiological profile, relative to controls: greater late CNV amplitudes over central areas, suggesting enhanced stimulus expectancy and motor preparation prior to key events. Controls, in contrast, recruited more frontal sites, consistent with inefficient sensory-aligned control. We conclude that in more demanding cognitive contexts exploiting the spared senses, people with blindness efficiently generate task-relevant internal models to facilitate behavior.
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Affiliation(s)
- Eva Breitinger
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics, and Psychotherapy, University of Cologne, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Cologne, Germany
| | - Neil M Dundon
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Psychosomatics, University of Freiburg, Germany
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA
| | - Lena Pokorny
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics, and Psychotherapy, University of Cologne, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Cologne, Germany
| | - Heidrun L Wunram
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics, and Psychotherapy, University of Cologne, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Cologne, Germany
- Department of Pediatrics, University of Cologne, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Cologne, Germany
| | - Veit Roessner
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, Faculty of Medicine, University Hospital C. G. Carus, Germany
| | - Stephan Bender
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics, and Psychotherapy, University of Cologne, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Cologne, Germany
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12
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Benozzo D, Ferrucci L, Genovesio A. Effects of contraction bias on the decision process in the macaque prefrontal cortex. Cereb Cortex 2023; 33:2958-2968. [PMID: 35718538 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhac253] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/29/2021] [Revised: 05/30/2022] [Accepted: 05/30/2022] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Our representation of magnitudes such as time, distance, and size is not always veridical because it is affected by multiple biases. From a Bayesian perspective, estimation errors are considered to be the result of an optimization mechanism for the behavior in a noisy environment by integrating previous experience with the incoming sensory information. One influence of the distribution of past stimuli on perceptual decisions is represented by the regression toward the mean, a type of contraction bias. Using a spatial discrimination task with 2 stimuli presented sequentially at different distances from the center, we show that this bias is also present in macaques when comparing the magnitude of 2 distances. We found that the contraction of the first stimulus magnitude toward the center of the distribution accounted for some of the changes in performance, even more so than the effect of difficulty related to the ratio between stimulus magnitudes. At the neural level in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the coding of the decision after the presentation of the second stimulus reflected the effect of the contraction bias on the discriminability of the stimuli at the behavioral level.
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Affiliation(s)
- Danilo Benozzo
- Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Sapienza University of Rome, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Rome, Italy
| | - Lorenzo Ferrucci
- Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Sapienza University of Rome, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Rome, Italy
| | - Aldo Genovesio
- Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Sapienza University of Rome, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Rome, Italy
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13
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Sharma H, Azouz R. Coexisting neuronal coding strategies in the barrel cortex. Cereb Cortex 2022; 32:4986-5004. [PMID: 35149866 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhab527] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/11/2021] [Revised: 12/19/2021] [Accepted: 12/20/2021] [Indexed: 12/27/2022] Open
Abstract
During tactile sensation by rodents, whisker movements across surfaces generate complex whisker motions, including discrete, transient stick-slip events, which carry information about surface properties. The characteristics of these events and how the brain encodes this tactile information remain enigmatic. We found that cortical neurons show a mixture of synchronized and nontemporally correlated spikes in their tactile responses. Synchronous spikes convey the magnitude of stick-slip events by numerous aspects of temporal coding. These spikes show preferential selectivity for kinetic and kinematic whisker motion. By contrast, asynchronous spikes in each neuron convey the magnitude of stick-slip events by their discharge rates, response probability, and interspike intervals. We further show that the differentiation between these two types of activity is highly dependent on the magnitude of stick-slip events and stimulus and response history. These results suggest that cortical neurons transmit multiple components of tactile information through numerous coding strategies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hariom Sharma
- Department of Physiology and Cell Biology, Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel
| | - Rony Azouz
- Department of Physiology and Cell Biology, Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel
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14
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Persistent activity in human parietal cortex mediates perceptual choice repetition bias. Nat Commun 2022; 13:6015. [PMID: 36224207 PMCID: PMC9556658 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-33237-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/11/2021] [Accepted: 09/08/2022] [Indexed: 11/09/2022] Open
Abstract
Humans and other animals tend to repeat or alternate their previous choices, even when judging sensory stimuli presented in a random sequence. It is unclear if and how sensory, associative, and motor cortical circuits produce these idiosyncratic behavioral biases. Here, we combined behavioral modeling of a visual perceptual decision with magnetoencephalographic (MEG) analyses of neural dynamics, across multiple regions of the human cerebral cortex. We identified distinct history-dependent neural signals in motor and posterior parietal cortex. Gamma-band activity in parietal cortex tracked previous choices in a sustained fashion, and biased evidence accumulation toward choice repetition; sustained beta-band activity in motor cortex inversely reflected the previous motor action, and biased the accumulation starting point toward alternation. The parietal, not motor, signal mediated the impact of previous on current choice and reflected individual differences in choice repetition. In sum, parietal cortical signals seem to play a key role in shaping choice sequences.
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15
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Sharma D, Ng KKW, Birznieks I, Vickery RM. Auditory clicks elicit equivalent temporal frequency perception to tactile pulses: A cross-modal psychophysical study. Front Neurosci 2022; 16:1006185. [PMID: 36161171 PMCID: PMC9500524 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2022.1006185] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/29/2022] [Accepted: 08/24/2022] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
Both hearing and touch are sensitive to the frequency of mechanical oscillations—sound waves and tactile vibrations, respectively. The mounting evidence of parallels in temporal frequency processing between the two sensory systems led us to directly address the question of perceptual frequency equivalence between touch and hearing using stimuli of simple and more complex temporal features. In a cross-modal psychophysical paradigm, subjects compared the perceived frequency of pulsatile mechanical vibrations to that elicited by pulsatile acoustic (click) trains, and vice versa. Non-invasive pulsatile stimulation designed to excite a fixed population of afferents was used to induce desired temporal spike trains at frequencies spanning flutter up to vibratory hum (>50 Hz). The cross-modal perceived frequency for regular test pulse trains of either modality was a close match to the presented stimulus physical frequency up to 100 Hz. We then tested whether the recently discovered “burst gap” temporal code for frequency, that is shared by the two senses, renders an equivalent cross-modal frequency perception. When subjects compared trains comprising pairs of pulses (bursts) in one modality against regular trains in the other, the cross-sensory equivalent perceptual frequency best corresponded to the silent interval between the successive bursts in both auditory and tactile test stimuli. These findings suggest that identical acoustic and vibrotactile pulse trains, regardless of pattern, elicit equivalent frequencies, and imply analogous temporal frequency computation strategies in both modalities. This perceptual correspondence raises the possibility of employing a cross-modal comparison as a robust standard to overcome the prevailing methodological limitations in psychophysical investigations and strongly encourages cross-modal approaches for transmitting sensory information such as translating pitch into a similar pattern of vibration on the skin.
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Affiliation(s)
- Deepak Sharma
- School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney), Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- *Correspondence: Deepak Sharma,
| | - Kevin K. W. Ng
- Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience, Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden
| | - Ingvars Birznieks
- School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney), Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Bionics and Bio-Robotics, Tyree Foundation Institute of Health Engineering, The University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney), Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Richard M. Vickery
- School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney), Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Bionics and Bio-Robotics, Tyree Foundation Institute of Health Engineering, The University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney), Sydney, NSW, Australia
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16
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Erez Y, Kadohisa M, Petrov P, Sigala N, Buckley MJ, Kusunoki M, Duncan J. Integrated neural dynamics for behavioural decisions and attentional competition in the prefrontal cortex. Eur J Neurosci 2022; 56:4393-4410. [PMID: 35781352 DOI: 10.1111/ejn.15757] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/20/2021] [Revised: 06/30/2022] [Accepted: 07/01/2022] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
In the behaving monkey, complex neural dynamics in the prefrontal cortex contribute to context-dependent decisions and attentional competition. We used demixed principal component analysis to track prefrontal activity dynamics in a cued target detection task. In this task, the animal combined identity of a visual object with a prior instruction cue to determine a target/nontarget decision. From population activity, we extracted principal components for each task feature and examined their time course and sensitivity to stimulus and task variations. For displays containing a single choice object in left or right hemifield, object identity, cue identity and decision were all encoded in population activity, with different dynamics and lateralisation. Object information peaked at 100-200 ms from display onset and was largely confined to the contralateral hemisphere. Cue information was weaker and present even prior to display onset. Integrating information from cue and object, decision information arose more slowly and was bilateral. Individual neurons contributed independently to coding of the three task features. The analysis was then extended to displays with a target in one hemifield and a competing distractor in the other. In this case, the data suggest that each hemisphere initially encoded the identity of the contralateral object. The distractor representation was then rapidly suppressed, with the final target decision again encoded bilaterally. The results show how information is coded along task-related dimensions while competition is resolved and suggest how information flows within and across frontal lobes to implement a learned behavioural decision.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yaara Erez
- Faculty of Engineering, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
- MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
- Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
| | - Mikiko Kadohisa
- MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
| | - Philippe Petrov
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Natasha Sigala
- Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Brighton, UK
- Sackler Center for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
| | - Mark J Buckley
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Makoto Kusunoki
- MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
| | - John Duncan
- MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
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17
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De Havas J, Ito S, Bestmann S, Gomi H. Neural dynamics of illusory tactile pulling sensations. iScience 2022; 25:105018. [PMID: 36105590 PMCID: PMC9464957 DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105018] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/28/2022] [Revised: 07/13/2022] [Accepted: 08/22/2022] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Directional tactile pulling sensations are integral to everyday life, but their neural mechanisms remain unknown. Prior accounts hold that primary somatosensory (SI) activity is sufficient to generate pulling sensations, with alternative proposals suggesting that amodal frontal or parietal regions may be critical. We combined high-density EEG with asymmetric vibration, which creates an illusory pulling sensation, thereby unconfounding pulling sensations from unrelated sensorimotor processes. Oddballs that created opposite direction pulls to common stimuli were compared to the same oddballs after neutral common stimuli (symmetric vibration) and to neutral oddballs. We found evidence against the sensory-frontal N140 and in favor of the midline P200 tracking the emergence of pulling sensations, specifically contralateral parietal lobe activity 264-320ms, centered on the intraparietal sulcus. This suggests that SI is not sufficient to generate pulling sensations, which instead depend on the parietal association cortex, and may reflect the extraction of orientation information and related spatial processing. Tactile pulling sensations are difficult to isolate in the human brain Illusory pulls from asymmetric vibration allow neural activity to be isolated Pulling sensations are driven by parietal lobe activity 264-320ms post-stimulus Spatial processing in the parietal lobe may be essential for pulling sensations
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18
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Sasaki R, Watanabe H, Onishi H. Therapeutic benefits of noninvasive somatosensory cortex stimulation on cortical plasticity and somatosensory function: a systematic review. Eur J Neurosci 2022; 56:4669-4698. [PMID: 35804487 DOI: 10.1111/ejn.15767] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/20/2021] [Revised: 05/23/2022] [Accepted: 06/09/2022] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Optimal limb coordination requires efficient transmission of somatosensory information to the sensorimotor cortex. The primary somatosensory cortex (S1) is frequently damaged by stroke, resulting in both somatosensory and motor impairments. Noninvasive brain stimulation (NIBS) to the primary motor cortex is thought to induce neural plasticity that facilitates neurorehabilitation. Several studies have also examined if NIBS to the S1 can enhance somatosensory processing as assessed by somatosensory-evoked potentials (SEPs) and improve behavioral task performance, but it remains uncertain if NIBS can reliably modulate S1 plasticity or even whether SEPs can reflect this plasticity. This systematic review revealed that NIBS has relatively minor effects on SEPs or somatosensory task performance, but larger early SEP changes after NIBS can still predict improved performance. Similarly, decreased paired-pulse inhibition in S1 post-NIBS is associated with improved somatosensory performance. However, several studies still debate the role of inhibitory function in somatosensory performance after NIBS in terms of the direction of the change (that, disinhibition or inhibition). Altogether, early SEP and paired-pulse inhibition (particularly inter-stimulus intervals of 30-100 ms) may become useful biomarkers for somatosensory deficits, but improved NIBS protocols are required for therapeutic applications.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ryoki Sasaki
- Institute for Human Movement and Medical Sciences, Niigata University of Health and Welfare, Niigata, Japan.,Discipline of Physiology, School of Biomedicine, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia
| | - Hiraku Watanabe
- Institute for Human Movement and Medical Sciences, Niigata University of Health and Welfare, Niigata, Japan.,Department of Physical Therapy, Niigata University of Health and Welfare, Niigata, Japan
| | - Hideaki Onishi
- Institute for Human Movement and Medical Sciences, Niigata University of Health and Welfare, Niigata, Japan.,Department of Physical Therapy, Niigata University of Health and Welfare, Niigata, Japan
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19
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Breitinger E, Pokorny L, Biermann L, Jarczok TA, Dundon NM, Roessner V, Bender S. What makes somatosensory short-term memory maintenance effective? An EEG study comparing contralateral delay activity between sighted participants and participants who are blind. Neuroimage 2022; 259:119407. [PMID: 35752414 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119407] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/02/2022] [Revised: 05/27/2022] [Accepted: 06/21/2022] [Indexed: 11/26/2022] Open
Abstract
Somatosensory short-term memory is essential for object recognition, sensorimotor learning, and, especially, Braille reading for people who are blind. This study examined how visual sensory deprivation and a compensatory focus on somatosensory information influences memory processes in this domain. We measured slow cortical negativity developing during short-term tactile memory maintenance (tactile contralateral delay activity, tCDA) in frontal and somatosensory areas while a sample of 24 sighted participants and 22 participants who are blind completed a tactile change-detection task where varying loads of Braille pin patterns served as stimuli. Auditory cues, appearing at varying latencies between sample arrays, could be used to reduce memory demands during maintenance. Participants who are blind (trained Braille readers) outperformed sighted participants behaviorally. In addition, while task-related frontal activation featured in both groups, participants who are blind uniquely showed higher tCDA amplitudes specifically over somatosensory areas. The site specificity of this component's functional relevance in short-term memory maintenance was further supported by somatosensory tCDA amplitudes first correlating across the whole sample with behavioral performance, and secondly showing sensitivity to varying memory load. The results substantiate sensory recruitment models and provide new insights into the effects of visual sensory deprivation on tactile processing. Between-group differences in the interplay between frontal and somatosensory areas during somatosensory maintenance also suggest that efficient maintenance of complex tactile stimuli in short-term memory is primarily facilitated by lateralized activity in somatosensory cortex.
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Affiliation(s)
- Eva Breitinger
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics, and Psychotherapy, University of Cologne, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Cologne, Germany.
| | - Lena Pokorny
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics, and Psychotherapy, University of Cologne, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Cologne, Germany
| | - Lea Biermann
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics, and Psychotherapy, University of Cologne, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Cologne, Germany
| | - Tomasz Antoni Jarczok
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics, and Psychotherapy, University of Cologne, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Cologne, Germany; Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Frankfurt, Germany; Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, KJF Klinik Josefinum, Augsburg, Germany
| | - Neil M Dundon
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Psychosomatics, University of Freiburg, Germany; Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA
| | - Veit Roessner
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, Faculty of Medicine, University Hospital C. G. Carus, Germany
| | - Stephan Bender
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics, and Psychotherapy, University of Cologne, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Cologne, Germany
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20
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Bhattacharjee A, Schwarz C. Temporally Local Tactile Codes Can Be Stored in Working Memory. Front Hum Neurosci 2022; 16:840108. [PMID: 35712533 PMCID: PMC9195853 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.840108] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/20/2021] [Accepted: 05/04/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Tactile exploration often involves sequential touches interspersed with stimulus-free durations (e.g., the time during which the hand moves from one textured surface to the other). Whereas it is obvious that texture-related perceptual variables, irrespective of the encoding strategy, must be stored in memory for comparison, it is rather unclear which of those variables are held in memory. There are two established variables—“intensity” and “frequency”, which are “temporally global” variables because of the long stimulus integration interval required to average the signal or derive spectral components, respectively; on the other hand, a recently established third contender is the “temporally local” variable that codes for kinematic profiles of very short, suprathreshold events in the vibrotactile signal. Here, we present the first psychophysical evidence that temporally local variables can be stored in memory. To that end, we asked participants to detect changes in pulsatile indentation stimuli at their fingertips with and without a gap of 1 s between stimulus presentations. The stimuli either contained global variables alone (change of pulse rate), or a mix of local and global variables (change of pulse shape). We found, first, that humans are much better at detecting a change in stimuli when local variables are available rather than global ones alone—as evident by the fact that 21 compared to only 6 participants out of 25 yielded a valid psychophysical curve, respectively. Second, this observation persists even when there is a gap between the stimuli, implying local variables must be stored in memory. Third, an extensive array of relevant intensity definitions failed to explain participants’ performance in any consistent manner, which implies that perceptual decisions were less likely to be driven by intensity coding. Taken together, our results suggest that humans perform pulsatile change detection utilizing local pulse shape, and to a lesser degree global pulse rate, and that both parameters can be stored in memory.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arindam Bhattacharjee
- Werner Reichardt Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Systems Neuroscience, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
- Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
| | - Cornelius Schwarz
- Werner Reichardt Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Systems Neuroscience, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
- Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
- *Correspondence: Cornelius Schwarz
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21
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Al Qasem W, Abubaker M, Kvašňák E. Working Memory and Transcranial-Alternating Current Stimulation-State of the Art: Findings, Missing, and Challenges. Front Psychol 2022; 13:822545. [PMID: 35237214 PMCID: PMC8882605 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.822545] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/25/2021] [Accepted: 01/19/2022] [Indexed: 12/06/2022] Open
Abstract
Working memory (WM) is a cognitive process that involves maintaining and manipulating information for a short period of time. WM is central to many cognitive processes and declines rapidly with age. Deficits in WM are seen in older adults and in patients with dementia, schizophrenia, major depression, mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease, etc. The frontal, parietal, and occipital cortices are significantly involved in WM processing and all brain oscillations are implicated in tackling WM tasks, particularly theta and gamma bands. The theta/gamma neural code hypothesis assumes that retained memory items are recorded via theta-nested gamma cycles. Neuronal oscillations can be manipulated by sensory, invasive- and non-invasive brain stimulations. Transcranial alternating-current stimulation (tACS) and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) are frequency-tuned non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques that have been used to entrain endogenous oscillations in a frequency-specific manner. Compared to rTMS, tACS demonstrates superior cost, tolerability, portability, and safety profile, making it an attractive potential tool for improving cognitive performance. Although cognitive research with tACS is still in its infancy compared to rTMS, a number of studies have shown a promising WM enhancement effect, especially in the elderly and patients with cognitive deficits. This review focuses on the various methods and outcomes of tACS on WM in healthy and unhealthy human adults and highlights the established findings, unknowns, challenges, and perspectives important for translating laboratory tACS into realistic clinical settings. This will allow researchers to identify gaps in the literature and develop frequency-tuned tACS protocols with promising safety and efficacy outcomes. Therefore, research efforts in this direction should help to consider frequency-tuned tACS as a non-pharmacological tool of cognitive rehabilitation in physiological aging and patients with cognitive deficits.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wiam Al Qasem
- Department of Medical Biophysics and Medical Informatics, Third Faculty of Medicine, Charles University in Prague, Praha, Czechia
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22
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Wang X, Zhang Y, Bai S, Qi R, Sun H, Li R, Zhu L, Cao X, Jia G, Li X, Gao L. Corticofugal Modulation of Temporal and Rate Representations in the Inferior Colliculus of the Awake Marmoset. Cereb Cortex 2022; 32:4080-4097. [PMID: 35029654 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhab467] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/21/2021] [Revised: 10/12/2021] [Accepted: 11/16/2021] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Temporal processing is crucial for auditory perception and cognition, especially for communication sounds. Previous studies have shown that the auditory cortex and the thalamus use temporal and rate representations to encode slowly and rapidly changing time-varying sounds. However, how the primate inferior colliculus (IC) encodes time-varying sounds at the millisecond scale remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the temporal processing by IC neurons in awake marmosets to Gaussian click trains with varying interclick intervals (2-100 ms). Strikingly, we found that 28% of IC neurons exhibited rate representation with nonsynchronized responses, which is in sharp contrast to the current view that the IC only uses a temporal representation to encode time-varying signals. Moreover, IC neurons with rate representation exhibited response properties distinct from those with temporal representation. We further demonstrated that reversible inactivation of the primary auditory cortex modulated 17% of the stimulus-synchronized responses and 21% of the nonsynchronized responses of IC neurons, revealing that cortico-colliculus projections play a role, but not a crucial one, in temporal processing in the IC. This study has significantly advanced our understanding of temporal processing in the IC of awake animals and provides new insights into temporal processing from the midbrain to the cortex.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xiaohui Wang
- Department of Neurology of the Second Affiliated Hospital, Interdisciplinary Institute of Neuroscience and Technology, College of Biomedical Engineering and Instrument Science, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310000, China
| | - Yuanqing Zhang
- Department of Neurology of the Second Affiliated Hospital, Interdisciplinary Institute of Neuroscience and Technology, College of Biomedical Engineering and Instrument Science, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310000, China
| | - Siyi Bai
- Department of Neurology of the Second Affiliated Hospital, Interdisciplinary Institute of Neuroscience and Technology, College of Biomedical Engineering and Instrument Science, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310000, China
| | - Runze Qi
- Department of Neurology of the Second Affiliated Hospital, Interdisciplinary Institute of Neuroscience and Technology, College of Biomedical Engineering and Instrument Science, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310000, China
| | - Hao Sun
- Department of Neurology of the Second Affiliated Hospital, Interdisciplinary Institute of Neuroscience and Technology, College of Biomedical Engineering and Instrument Science, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310000, China
| | - Rui Li
- Department of Neurology of the Second Affiliated Hospital, Interdisciplinary Institute of Neuroscience and Technology, College of Biomedical Engineering and Instrument Science, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310000, China
| | - Lin Zhu
- Department of Neurology of the Second Affiliated Hospital, Interdisciplinary Institute of Neuroscience and Technology, College of Biomedical Engineering and Instrument Science, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310000, China
| | - Xinyuan Cao
- Department of Neurology of the Second Affiliated Hospital, Interdisciplinary Institute of Neuroscience and Technology, College of Biomedical Engineering and Instrument Science, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310000, China
| | - Guoqiang Jia
- Department of Neurology of the Second Affiliated Hospital, Interdisciplinary Institute of Neuroscience and Technology, College of Biomedical Engineering and Instrument Science, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310000, China
| | - Xinjian Li
- Department of Neurology of the Second Affiliated Hospital, Interdisciplinary Institute of Neuroscience and Technology, College of Biomedical Engineering and Instrument Science, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310000, China
| | - Lixia Gao
- Department of Neurology of the Second Affiliated Hospital, Interdisciplinary Institute of Neuroscience and Technology, College of Biomedical Engineering and Instrument Science, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310000, China
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23
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Froudist-Walsh S, Bliss DP, Ding X, Rapan L, Niu M, Knoblauch K, Zilles K, Kennedy H, Palomero-Gallagher N, Wang XJ. A dopamine gradient controls access to distributed working memory in the large-scale monkey cortex. Neuron 2021; 109:3500-3520.e13. [PMID: 34536352 PMCID: PMC8571070 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.08.024] [Citation(s) in RCA: 40] [Impact Index Per Article: 13.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/25/2021] [Revised: 06/08/2021] [Accepted: 08/17/2021] [Indexed: 12/13/2022]
Abstract
Dopamine is required for working memory, but how it modulates the large-scale cortex is unknown. Here, we report that dopamine receptor density per neuron, measured by autoradiography, displays a macroscopic gradient along the macaque cortical hierarchy. This gradient is incorporated in a connectome-based large-scale cortex model endowed with multiple neuron types. The model captures an inverted U-shaped dependence of working memory on dopamine and spatial patterns of persistent activity observed in over 90 experimental studies. Moreover, we show that dopamine is crucial for filtering out irrelevant stimuli by enhancing inhibition from dendrite-targeting interneurons. Our model revealed that an activity-silent memory trace can be realized by facilitation of inter-areal connections and that adjusting cortical dopamine induces a switch from this internal memory state to distributed persistent activity. Our work represents a cross-level understanding from molecules and cell types to recurrent circuit dynamics underlying a core cognitive function distributed across the primate cortex.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Daniel P Bliss
- Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA
| | - Xingyu Ding
- Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA
| | | | - Meiqi Niu
- Research Centre Jülich, INM-1, Jülich, Germany
| | - Kenneth Knoblauch
- INSERM U846, Stem Cell & Brain Research Institute, 69500 Bron, France; Université de Lyon, Université Lyon I, 69003 Lyon, France
| | - Karl Zilles
- Research Centre Jülich, INM-1, Jülich, Germany
| | - Henry Kennedy
- INSERM U846, Stem Cell & Brain Research Institute, 69500 Bron, France; Université de Lyon, Université Lyon I, 69003 Lyon, France; Institute of Neuroscience, State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Key Laboratory of Primate Neurobiology CAS, Shanghai, China
| | - Nicola Palomero-Gallagher
- Research Centre Jülich, INM-1, Jülich, Germany; C. & O. Vogt Institute for Brain Research, Heinrich-Heine-University, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany
| | - Xiao-Jing Wang
- Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA.
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Abstract
Identical physical inputs do not always evoke identical percepts. To investigate the role of stimulus history in tactile perception, we designed a task in which rats had to judge each vibrissal vibration, in a long series, as strong or weak depending on its mean speed. After a low-speed stimulus (trial n - 1), rats were more likely to report the next stimulus (trial n) as strong, and after a high-speed stimulus, they were more likely to report the next stimulus as weak, a repulsive effect that did not depend on choice or reward on trial n - 1. This effect could be tracked over several preceding trials (i.e., n - 2 and earlier) and was characterized by an exponential decay function, reflecting a trial-by-trial incorporation of sensory history. Surprisingly, the influence of trial n - 1 strengthened as the time interval between n - 1 and n grew. Human subjects receiving fingertip vibrations showed these same key findings. We are able to account for the repulsive stimulus history effect, and its detailed time scale, through a single-parameter model, wherein each new stimulus gradually updates the subject's decision criterion. This model points to mechanisms underlying how the past affects the ongoing subjective experience.
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Abstract
Working memory (WM) is the ability to maintain and manipulate information in the conscious mind over a timescale of seconds. This ability is thought to be maintained through the persistent discharges of neurons in a network of brain areas centered on the prefrontal cortex, as evidenced by neurophysiological recordings in nonhuman primates, though both the localization and the neural basis of WM has been a matter of debate in recent years. Neural correlates of WM are evident in species other than primates, including rodents and corvids. A specialized network of excitatory and inhibitory neurons, aided by neuromodulatory influences of dopamine, is critical for the maintenance of neuronal activity. Limitations in WM capacity and duration, as well as its enhancement during development, can be attributed to properties of neural activity and circuits. Changes in these factors can be observed through training-induced improvements and in pathological impairments. WM thus provides a prototypical cognitive function whose properties can be tied to the spiking activity of brain neurons. © 2021 American Physiological Society. Compr Physiol 11:1-41, 2021.
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Affiliation(s)
- Russell J Jaffe
- Department of Neurobiology & Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA
| | - Christos Constantinidis
- Department of Neurobiology & Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
- Neuroscience Program, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
- Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
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26
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Harrell ER, Renard A, Bathellier B. Fast cortical dynamics encode tactile grating orientation during active touch. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2021; 7:eabf7096. [PMID: 34516895 PMCID: PMC8442870 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abf7096] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/03/2023]
Abstract
Touch-based object recognition relies on perception of compositional tactile features like roughness, shape, and surface orientation. However, besides roughness, it remains unclear how these different tactile features are encoded by neural activity that is linked with perception. Here, we establish a cortex-dependent perceptual task in which mice discriminate tactile gratings on the basis of orientation using only their whiskers. Multielectrode recordings in the barrel cortex reveal weak orientation tuning in average firing rates (500-ms time scale) during grating exploration despite high levels of cortical activity. Just before decision, orientation information extracted from fast cortical dynamics (100-ms time scale) more closely resembles concurrent psychophysical measurements than single neuron orientation tuning curves. This temporal code conveys both stimulus and choice/action-related information, suggesting that fast cortical dynamics during exploration of a tactile object both reflect the physical stimulus and affect the decision.
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Affiliation(s)
- Evan R. Harrell
- Department for Integrative and Computational Neuroscience (ICN), Paris-Saclay Institute of Neuroscience (NeuroPSI), UMR9197 CNRS/University Paris Sud CNRS, Building 32/33, 1 Avenue de la Terrasse, 91190 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
- Institut Pasteur, INSERM, Institut de l’Audition, 63 rue de Charenton, F-75012 Paris, France
- Corresponding author. (E.R.H.); (B.B.)
| | - Anthony Renard
- Department for Integrative and Computational Neuroscience (ICN), Paris-Saclay Institute of Neuroscience (NeuroPSI), UMR9197 CNRS/University Paris Sud CNRS, Building 32/33, 1 Avenue de la Terrasse, 91190 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
- Institut Pasteur, INSERM, Institut de l’Audition, 63 rue de Charenton, F-75012 Paris, France
| | - Brice Bathellier
- Department for Integrative and Computational Neuroscience (ICN), Paris-Saclay Institute of Neuroscience (NeuroPSI), UMR9197 CNRS/University Paris Sud CNRS, Building 32/33, 1 Avenue de la Terrasse, 91190 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
- Institut Pasteur, INSERM, Institut de l’Audition, 63 rue de Charenton, F-75012 Paris, France
- Corresponding author. (E.R.H.); (B.B.)
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27
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Togoli I, Arrighi R. Evidence for an A-Modal Number Sense: Numerosity Adaptation Generalizes Across Visual, Auditory, and Tactile Stimuli. Front Hum Neurosci 2021; 15:713565. [PMID: 34456699 PMCID: PMC8385665 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2021.713565] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/23/2021] [Accepted: 07/16/2021] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
Humans and other species share a perceptual mechanism dedicated to the representation of approximate quantities that allows to rapidly and reliably estimate the numerosity of a set of objects: an Approximate Number System (ANS). Numerosity perception shows a characteristic shared by all primary visual features: it is susceptible to adaptation. As a consequence of prolonged exposure to a large/small quantity (“adaptor”), the apparent numerosity of a subsequent (“test”) stimulus is distorted yielding a robust under- or over-estimation, respectively. Even if numerosity adaptation has been reported across several sensory modalities (vision, audition, and touch), suggesting the idea of a central and a-modal numerosity processing system, evidence for cross-modal effects are limited to vision and audition, two modalities that are known to preferentially encode sensory stimuli in an external coordinate system. Here we test whether numerosity adaptation for visual and auditory stimuli also distorts the perceived numerosity of tactile stimuli (and vice-versa) despite touch being a modality primarily coded in an internal (body-centered) reference frame. We measured numerosity discrimination of stimuli presented sequentially after adaptation to series of either few (around 2 Hz; low adaptation) or numerous (around 8 Hz; high adaptation) impulses for all possible combinations of visual, auditory, or tactile adapting and test stimuli. In all cases, adapting to few impulses yielded a significant overestimation of the test numerosity with the opposite occurring as a consequence of adaptation to numerous stimuli. The overall magnitude of adaptation was robust (around 30%) and rather similar for all sensory modality combinations. Overall, these findings support the idea of a truly generalized and a-modal mechanism for numerosity representation aimed to process numerical information independently from the sensory modality of the incoming signals.
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Affiliation(s)
- Irene Togoli
- International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), Trieste, Italy
| | - Roberto Arrighi
- Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Pharmacology and Child Health, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
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28
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Huang CW, Lin CH, Lin YH, Tsai HY, Tseng MT. Neural Basis of Somatosensory Spatial and Temporal Discrimination in Humans: The Role of Sensory Detection. Cereb Cortex 2021; 32:1480-1493. [PMID: 34427294 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhab301] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/27/2021] [Revised: 07/29/2021] [Accepted: 07/30/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
While detecting somatic stimuli from the external environment, an accurate determination of their spatial and temporal properties is essential for human behavior. Whether and how detection relates to human capacity for somatosensory spatial discrimination (SD) and temporal discrimination (TD) remains unclear. Here, participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning when simply detecting vibrotactile stimuli of the leg, judging their location (SD), or deciding their number in time (TD). By conceptualizing tactile discrimination as consisting of detection and determination processes, we found that tactile detection elicited activation specifically involved in SD within the right inferior and superior parietal lobules, 2 regions previously implicated in the control of spatial attention. These 2 regions remained activated in the determination process, during which functional connectivity between these 2 regions predicted individual SD ability. In contrast, tactile detection produced little activation specifically related to TD. Participants' TD ability was implemented in brain regions implicated in coding temporal structures of somatic stimuli (primary somatosensory cortex) and time estimation (anterior cingulate, pre-supplementary motor area, and putamen). Together, our findings indicate a close link between somatosensory detection and SD (but not TD) at the neural level, which aids in explaining why we can promptly respond toward detected somatic stimuli.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cheng-Wei Huang
- Graduate Institute of Clinical Medicine, National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan
| | - Chin-Hsien Lin
- Department of Neurology, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan
| | - Yi-Hsuan Lin
- Taiwan International Graduate Program in Interdisciplinary Neuroscience, National Taiwan University and Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
| | - Hsin-Yun Tsai
- Taiwan International Graduate Program in Interdisciplinary Neuroscience, National Taiwan University and Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
| | - Ming-Tsung Tseng
- Graduate Institute of Brain and Mind Sciences, National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan
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29
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The capacity and cognitive processing of vibrotactile working memory for frequency. CURRENT PSYCHOLOGY 2021. [DOI: 10.1007/s12144-021-02212-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/20/2022]
Abstract
AbstractA hallmark of working memory (WM) is its limited capacity. While visual and verbal domains of WM are able to store multiple items, the capacity of parametric vibrotactile WM (vtWM) has not yet been established for supra-threshold, one-dimensional sensory vibrotactile frequencies. The present study extends the standard delayed match-to-sample vibrotactile discrimination task to determine the capacity of the vtWM and its cognitive mechanism. Here, by presenting subjects with 2 to 6 vibratory frequencies sequentially in each trial, the present study demonstrates that it is possible to retain about only two vibrotactile frequencies information in vtWM. The results also showed that the capacity of vtWM does not depend on whether sequentially presented vibrotactile frequencies are delivered to the same or to different fingers. At the same time, the rate of correct report depends on sequence length and when in the sequence the stimuli are presented, suggesting the dynamic updating of vtWM similar to that of visual WM.
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30
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Kwon J, Park S, Sakamoto M, Mito K. The Effects of Vibratory Frequency and Temporal Interval on Tactile Apparent Motion. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON HAPTICS 2021; 14:675-679. [PMID: 33439848 DOI: 10.1109/toh.2021.3051388] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
Vibrotactile stimuli can be used to generate the haptic sensation of a static object or the motion of a dynamic object. Here, in this article, we investigated the effects of vibratory frequency and temporal interval on tactile apparent motion. In the experiment, we examined the effect of vibratory frequency with different temporal intervals on tactile apparent motion that results from two successive tactile stimuli on the index fingerpad. Results indicated that tactile apparent motion was perceived not only when both stimuli were either "flutter" or "vibration" stimuli, but also when one of each type was used. Specifically, when the first stimulus was introduced at 40Hz, "continuous motion" was viewed at all combinations of stimulus frequency, and "continuous motion" was clearly noted at the high-frequency combination instead of the low-frequency combination. Also, tactile apparent motion was predominantly viewed in the SOA range of 105 ms to 125 ms. We anticipate that our findings and further research will be essential resources for the design of tactile devices to represent the motion of dynamic objects.
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31
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Downer JD, Bigelow J, Runfeldt MJ, Malone BJ. Temporally precise population coding of dynamic sounds by auditory cortex. J Neurophysiol 2021; 126:148-169. [PMID: 34077273 DOI: 10.1152/jn.00709.2020] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Fluctuations in the amplitude envelope of complex sounds provide critical cues for hearing, particularly for speech and animal vocalizations. Responses to amplitude modulation (AM) in the ascending auditory pathway have chiefly been described for single neurons. How neural populations might collectively encode and represent information about AM remains poorly characterized, even in primary auditory cortex (A1). We modeled population responses to AM based on data recorded from A1 neurons in awake squirrel monkeys and evaluated how accurately single trial responses to modulation frequencies from 4 to 512 Hz could be decoded as functions of population size, composition, and correlation structure. We found that a population-based decoding model that simulated convergent, equally weighted inputs was highly accurate and remarkably robust to the inclusion of neurons that were individually poor decoders. By contrast, average rate codes based on convergence performed poorly; effective decoding using average rates was only possible when the responses of individual neurons were segregated, as in classical population decoding models using labeled lines. The relative effectiveness of dynamic rate coding in auditory cortex was explained by shared modulation phase preferences among cortical neurons, despite heterogeneity in rate-based modulation frequency tuning. Our results indicate significant population-based synchrony in primary auditory cortex and suggest that robust population coding of the sound envelope information present in animal vocalizations and speech can be reliably achieved even with indiscriminate pooling of cortical responses. These findings highlight the importance of firing rate dynamics in population-based sensory coding.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Fundamental questions remain about population coding in primary auditory cortex (A1). In particular, issues of spike timing in models of neural populations have been largely ignored. We find that spike-timing in response to sound envelope fluctuations is highly similar across neuron populations in A1. This property of shared envelope phase preference allows for a simple population model involving unweighted convergence of neuronal responses to classify amplitude modulation frequencies with high accuracy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joshua D Downer
- Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, California
| | - James Bigelow
- Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, California
| | - Melissa J Runfeldt
- Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, California
| | - Brian J Malone
- Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, California.,Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco, California
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32
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Noel JP, Caziot B, Bruni S, Fitzgerald NE, Avila E, Angelaki DE. Supporting generalization in non-human primate behavior by tapping into structural knowledge: Examples from sensorimotor mappings, inference, and decision-making. Prog Neurobiol 2021; 201:101996. [PMID: 33454361 PMCID: PMC8096669 DOI: 10.1016/j.pneurobio.2021.101996] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/17/2020] [Revised: 12/15/2020] [Accepted: 01/12/2021] [Indexed: 02/05/2023]
Abstract
The complex behaviors we ultimately wish to understand are far from those currently used in systems neuroscience laboratories. A salient difference are the closed loops between action and perception prominently present in natural but not laboratory behaviors. The framework of reinforcement learning and control naturally wades across action and perception, and thus is poised to inform the neurosciences of tomorrow, not only from a data analyses and modeling framework, but also in guiding experimental design. We argue that this theoretical framework emphasizes active sensing, dynamical planning, and the leveraging of structural regularities as key operations for intelligent behavior within uncertain, time-varying environments. Similarly, we argue that we may study natural task strategies and their neural circuits without over-training animals when the tasks we use tap into our animal's structural knowledge. As proof-of-principle, we teach animals to navigate through a virtual environment - i.e., explore a well-defined and repetitive structure governed by the laws of physics - using a joystick. Once these animals have learned to 'drive', without further training they naturally (i) show zero- or one-shot learning of novel sensorimotor contingencies, (ii) infer the evolving path of dynamically changing latent variables, and (iii) make decisions consistent with maximizing reward rate. Such task designs allow for the study of flexible and generalizable, yet controlled, behaviors. In turn, they allow for the exploitation of pillars of intelligence - flexibility, prediction, and generalization -, properties whose neural underpinning have remained elusive.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jean-Paul Noel
- Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, USA
| | - Baptiste Caziot
- Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, USA
| | - Stefania Bruni
- Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, USA
| | | | - Eric Avila
- Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, USA
| | - Dora E Angelaki
- Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, USA; Tandon School of Engineering, New York University, New York, USA.
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33
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Abstract
In perceptual rivalry, ambiguous sensory information leads to dynamic changes in the perceptual interpretation of fixed stimuli. This phenomenon occurs when participants receive sensory stimuli that support two or more distinct interpretations; this results in spontaneous alternations between possible perceptual interpretations. Perceptual rivalry has been widely studied across different sensory modalities including vision, audition, and to a limited extent, in the tactile domain. Common features of perceptual rivalry across various ambiguous visual and auditory paradigms characterize the randomness of switching times and their dependence on input strength manipulations (Levelt's propositions). It is still unclear whether the general characteristics of perceptual rivalry are preserved with tactile stimuli. This study aims to introduce a simple tactile stimulus capable of generating perceptual rivalry and explores whether general features of perceptual rivalry from other modalities extend to the tactile domain. Our results confirm that Levelt's proposition II extends to tactile bistability, and that the stochastic characteristics of irregular perceptual alternations agree with non-tactile modalities. An analysis of correlations between subsequent perceptual phases reveals a significant positive correlation at lag 1 (as found in visual bistability), and a negative correlation for lag 2 (in contrast with visual bistability).
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34
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Chicharro D, Panzeri S, Haefner RM. Stimulus-dependent relationships between behavioral choice and sensory neural responses. eLife 2021; 10:e54858. [PMID: 33825683 PMCID: PMC8184215 DOI: 10.7554/elife.54858] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/02/2020] [Accepted: 04/06/2021] [Indexed: 01/16/2023] Open
Abstract
Understanding perceptual decision-making requires linking sensory neural responses to behavioral choices. In two-choice tasks, activity-choice covariations are commonly quantified with a single measure of choice probability (CP), without characterizing their changes across stimulus levels. We provide theoretical conditions for stimulus dependencies of activity-choice covariations. Assuming a general decision-threshold model, which comprises both feedforward and feedback processing and allows for a stimulus-modulated neural population covariance, we analytically predict a very general and previously unreported stimulus dependence of CPs. We develop new tools, including refined analyses of CPs and generalized linear models with stimulus-choice interactions, which accurately assess the stimulus- or choice-driven signals of each neuron, characterizing stimulus-dependent patterns of choice-related signals. With these tools, we analyze CPs of macaque MT neurons during a motion discrimination task. Our analysis provides preliminary empirical evidence for the promise of studying stimulus dependencies of choice-related signals, encouraging further assessment in wider data sets.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel Chicharro
- Neural Computation Laboratory, Center for Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems@UniTn, Istituto Italiano di TecnologiaRoveretoItaly
- Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical SchoolBostonUnited States
| | - Stefano Panzeri
- Neural Computation Laboratory, Center for Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems@UniTn, Istituto Italiano di TecnologiaRoveretoItaly
| | - Ralf M Haefner
- Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Center for Visual Science, University of RochesterRochesterUnited States
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35
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Dissecting the Roles of Supervised and Unsupervised Learning in Perceptual Discrimination Judgments. J Neurosci 2021; 41:757-765. [PMID: 33380471 PMCID: PMC7842757 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.0757-20.2020] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/02/2020] [Revised: 10/26/2020] [Accepted: 11/05/2020] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Our ability to compare sensory stimuli is a fundamental cognitive function, which is known to be affected by two biases: choice bias, which reflects a preference for a given response, and contraction bias, which reflects a tendency to perceive stimuli as similar to previous ones. To test whether both reflect supervised processes, we designed feedback protocols aimed to modify them and tested them in human participants. Choice bias was readily modifiable. However, contraction bias was not. To compare these results to those predicted from an optimal supervised process, we studied a noise-matched optimal linear discriminator (Perceptron). In this model, both biases were substantially modified, indicating that the “resilience” of contraction bias to feedback does not maximize performance. These results suggest that perceptual discrimination is a hierarchical, two-stage process. In the first, stimulus statistics are learned and integrated with representations in an unsupervised process that is impenetrable to external feedback. In the second, a binary judgment, learned in a supervised way, is applied to the combined percept. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The seemingly effortless process of inferring physical reality from the sensory input is highly influenced by previous knowledge, leading to perceptual biases. Two common ones are contraction bias (the tendency to perceive stimuli as similar to previous ones) and choice bias (the tendency to prefer a specific response). Combining human psychophysical experiments with computational modeling we show that they reflect two different learning processes. Contraction bias reflects unsupervised learning of stimuli statistics, whereas choice bias results from supervised or reinforcement learning. This dissociation reveals a hierarchical, two-stage process. The first, where stimuli statistics are learned and integrated with representations, is unsupervised. The second, where a binary judgment is applied to the combined percept, is learned in a supervised way.
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36
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Invariant timescale hierarchy across the cortical somatosensory network. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2021; 118:2021843118. [PMID: 33431695 PMCID: PMC7826380 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2021843118] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/18/2022] Open
Abstract
The ability of cortical networks to integrate information from different sources is essential for cognitive processes. On one hand, sensory areas exhibit fast dynamics often phase-locked to stimulation; on the other hand, frontal lobe areas with slow response latencies to stimuli must integrate and maintain information for longer periods. Thus, cortical areas may require different timescales depending on their functional role. Studying the cortical somatosensory network while monkeys discriminated between two vibrotactile stimulus patterns, we found that a hierarchical order could be established across cortical areas based on their intrinsic timescales. Further, even though subareas (areas 3b, 1, and 2) of the primary somatosensory (S1) cortex exhibit analogous firing rate responses, a clear differentiation was observed in their timescales. Importantly, we observed that this inherent timescale hierarchy was invariant between task contexts (demanding vs. nondemanding). Even if task context severely affected neural coding in cortical areas downstream to S1, their timescales remained unaffected. Moreover, we found that these time constants were invariant across neurons with different latencies or coding. Although neurons had completely different dynamics, they all exhibited comparable timescales within each cortical area. Our results suggest that this measure is demonstrative of an inherent characteristic of each cortical area, is not a dynamical feature of individual neurons, and does not depend on task demands.
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37
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Ng KKW, Snow IN, Birznieks I, Vickery RM. Burst gap code predictions for tactile frequency are valid across the range of perceived frequencies attributed to two distinct tactile channels. J Neurophysiol 2021; 125:687-692. [PMID: 33439792 DOI: 10.1152/jn.00662.2020] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Perceived frequency of vibrotactile stimuli can be divided into two distinctive cutaneous sensations-flutter (<60 Hz) and vibratory hum (>60 Hz), mediated by two different tactile afferent types [fast adapting type I (FA1) and fast adapting type II (FA2), respectively]. We recently demonstrated a novel form of neural coding in the human tactile system, where frequency perception of stimulus pulses grouped into periodic bursts in the flutter range depended on the duration of the silent gap between bursts, rather than the periodicity or mean impulse rate. Here, we investigated whether this interburst interval could also explain the perceived frequency of electrocutaneous pulse patterns delivered at frequencies above the flutter range. At stimulus rates of 50 to 190 pulses/s, the burst gap model correctly predicted the perceived frequency. This shows that the burst gap code represents a general coding strategy that spans the range of frequencies traditionally attributed to two different tactile channels.NEW & NOTEWORTHY We present evidence for a generalized frequency processing strategy on tactile afferent inputs that is shared across a broad range of frequencies extending beyond the flutter range, supporting the notion that spike timing has an important role in shaping tactile perception.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kevin K W Ng
- School of Medical Sciences, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia.,Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia
| | - Ian N Snow
- School of Medical Sciences, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia.,Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia
| | - Ingvars Birznieks
- School of Medical Sciences, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia.,Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia
| | - Richard M Vickery
- School of Medical Sciences, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia.,Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia
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38
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Toso A, Fassihi A, Paz L, Pulecchi F, Diamond ME. A sensory integration account for time perception. PLoS Comput Biol 2021; 17:e1008668. [PMID: 33513135 PMCID: PMC7875380 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008668] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/11/2020] [Revised: 02/10/2021] [Accepted: 01/04/2021] [Indexed: 12/03/2022] Open
Abstract
The connection between stimulus perception and time perception remains unknown. The present study combines human and rat psychophysics with sensory cortical neuronal firing to construct a computational model for the percept of elapsed time embedded within sense of touch. When subjects judged the duration of a vibration applied to the fingertip (human) or whiskers (rat), increasing stimulus intensity led to increasing perceived duration. Symmetrically, increasing vibration duration led to increasing perceived intensity. We modeled real spike trains recorded from vibrissal somatosensory cortex as input to dual leaky integrators-an intensity integrator with short time constant and a duration integrator with long time constant-generating neurometric functions that replicated the actual psychophysical functions of rats. Returning to human psychophysics, we then confirmed specific predictions of the dual leaky integrator model. This study offers a framework, based on sensory coding and subsequent accumulation of sensory drive, to account for how a feeling of the passage of time accompanies the tactile sensory experience.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alessandro Toso
- Cognitive Neuroscience PhD program, International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste, Italy
| | - Arash Fassihi
- Cognitive Neuroscience PhD program, International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste, Italy
- Department of Physics, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America
| | - Luciano Paz
- Cognitive Neuroscience PhD program, International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste, Italy
| | - Francesca Pulecchi
- Cognitive Neuroscience PhD program, International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste, Italy
| | - Mathew E. Diamond
- Cognitive Neuroscience PhD program, International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste, Italy
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39
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Togoli I, Marlair C, Collignon O, Arrighi R, Crollen V. Tactile numerosity is coded in external space. Cortex 2020; 134:43-51. [PMID: 33249299 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2020.10.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/12/2020] [Revised: 09/13/2020] [Accepted: 10/14/2020] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
Abstract
Humans, and several non-human species, possess the ability to make approximate but reliable estimates of the number of objects around them. Alike other perceptual features, numerosity perception is susceptible to adaptation: exposure to a high number of items causes underestimation of the numerosity of a subsequent set of items, and vice versa. Several studies have investigated adaptation in the auditory and visual modality, whereby stimuli are preferentially encoded in an external coordinate system. As tactile stimuli are primarily coded in an internal (body-centered) reference frame, here we ask whether tactile numerosity adaptation operates based on internal or external spatial coordinates as it occurs in vision or audition. Twenty participants performed an adaptation task with their right hand located either in the right (uncrossed) or left (crossed) hemispace, in order for the two hands to occupy either two completely different positions, or the same position in space, respectively. Tactile adaptor and test stimuli were passively delivered either to the same (adapted) or different (non-adapted) hands. Our results show a clear signature of tactile numerosity adaptation aftereffects with a pattern of over- and under-estimation according to the adaptation rate (low and high, respectively). In the uncrossed position, we observed stronger adaptation effects when adaptor and test stimuli were delivered to the "adapted" hand. However, when both hands were aligned in the same spatial position (crossed condition), the magnitude of adaptation was similar irrespective of which hand received adaptor and test stimuli. These results demonstrate that numerosity information is automatically coded in external coordinates even in the tactile modality, suggesting that such a spatial reference frame is an intrinsic property of numerosity processing irrespective of the sensory modality.
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Affiliation(s)
- Irene Togoli
- International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), Trieste, Italy.
| | - Cathy Marlair
- Psychological Sciences Research Institute (IPSY) and Institute of NeuroScience (IoNS), Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
| | - Olivier Collignon
- Psychological Sciences Research Institute (IPSY) and Institute of NeuroScience (IoNS), Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
| | - Roberto Arrighi
- University of Florence, Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Child Health, Florence, Italy.
| | - Virginie Crollen
- Psychological Sciences Research Institute (IPSY) and Institute of NeuroScience (IoNS), Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
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40
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Ng KKW, Olausson C, Vickery RM, Birznieks I. Temporal patterns in electrical nerve stimulation: Burst gap code shapes tactile frequency perception. PLoS One 2020; 15:e0237440. [PMID: 32790784 PMCID: PMC7425972 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0237440] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/15/2019] [Accepted: 07/27/2020] [Indexed: 12/25/2022] Open
Abstract
We have previously described a novel temporal encoding mechanism in the somatosensory system, where mechanical pulses grouped into periodic bursts create a perceived tactile frequency based on the duration of the silent gap between bursts, rather than the mean rate or the periodicity. This coding strategy may offer new opportunities for transmitting information to the brain using various sensory neural prostheses and haptic interfaces. However, it was not known whether the same coding mechanisms apply when using electrical stimulation, which recruits a different spectrum of afferents. Here, we demonstrate that the predictions of the burst gap coding model for frequency perception apply to burst stimuli delivered with electrical pulses, re-emphasising the importance of the temporal structure of spike patterns in neural processing and perception of tactile stimuli. Reciprocally, the electrical stimulation data confirm that the results observed with mechanical stimulation do indeed depend on neural processing mechanisms in the central nervous system, and are not due to skin mechanical factors and resulting patterns of afferent activation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kevin K. W. Ng
- School of Medical Sciences, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia
- Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia
- * E-mail:
| | - Christoffer Olausson
- Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia
- Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden
| | - Richard M. Vickery
- School of Medical Sciences, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia
- Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia
| | - Ingvars Birznieks
- School of Medical Sciences, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia
- Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia
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41
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Esmaeili V, Diamond ME. Neuronal Correlates of Tactile Working Memory in Prefrontal and Vibrissal Somatosensory Cortex. Cell Rep 2020; 27:3167-3181.e5. [PMID: 31189103 PMCID: PMC6581739 DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2019.05.034] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/25/2018] [Revised: 04/05/2019] [Accepted: 05/09/2019] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Tactile working memory engages a broad network of cortical regions in primates. To assess whether the conclusions drawn from primates apply to rodents, we examined the vibrissal primary somatosensory cortex (vS1) and the prelimbic cortex (PL) in a delayed comparison task. Rats compared the speeds of two vibrissal vibrations, stimulus1 and stimulus2, separated by a delay of 2 s. Neuronal firing rates in vS1 and PL encode both stimuli in real time. Across the delay, the stimulus1 representation declines more precipitously in vS1 than in PL. Theta-band local field potential (LFP) coherence between vS1 and PL peaks at trial onset and remains elevated during the interstimulus interval; simultaneously, vS1 spikes become phase locked to PL LFP. Phase locking is stronger on correct (versus error) trials. Tactile working memory in rats appears to be mediated by a posterior (vS1) to anterior (PL) flow of information, with performance facilitated through coherent LFP oscillation. Rats compared the speeds of two sequential vibrissal vibrations, separated by 2 s Neurons in the primary somatosensory (vS1) and prelimbic (PL) cortex coded the stimuli Theta local field potential coherence between vS1 and PL peaked at trial onset Intracortical coherent oscillations may play a role in rat tactile working memory
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Affiliation(s)
- Vahid Esmaeili
- Tactile Perception and Learning Laboratory, International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), Via Bonomea 265, 34136 Trieste, Italy
| | - Mathew E Diamond
- Tactile Perception and Learning Laboratory, International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), Via Bonomea 265, 34136 Trieste, Italy.
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42
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Rahman MS, Barnes KA, Crommett LE, Tommerdahl M, Yau JM. Auditory and tactile frequency representations are co-embedded in modality-defined cortical sensory systems. Neuroimage 2020; 215:116837. [PMID: 32289461 PMCID: PMC7292761 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116837] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/13/2019] [Revised: 03/17/2020] [Accepted: 04/06/2020] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Sensory information is represented and elaborated in hierarchical cortical systems that are thought to be dedicated to individual sensory modalities. This traditional view of sensory cortex organization has been challenged by recent evidence of multimodal responses in primary and association sensory areas. Although it is indisputable that sensory areas respond to multiple modalities, it remains unclear whether these multimodal responses reflect selective information processing for particular stimulus features. Here, we used fMRI adaptation to identify brain regions that are sensitive to the temporal frequency information contained in auditory, tactile, and audiotactile stimulus sequences. A number of brain regions distributed over the parietal and temporal lobes exhibited frequency-selective temporal response modulation for both auditory and tactile stimulus events, as indexed by repetition suppression effects. A smaller set of regions responded to crossmodal adaptation sequences in a frequency-dependent manner. Despite an extensive overlap of multimodal frequency-selective responses across the parietal and temporal lobes, representational similarity analysis revealed a cortical "regional landscape" that clearly reflected distinct somatosensory and auditory processing systems that converged on modality-invariant areas. These structured relationships between brain regions were also evident in spontaneous signal fluctuation patterns measured at rest. Our results reveal that multimodal processing in human cortex can be feature-specific and that multimodal frequency representations are embedded in the intrinsically hierarchical organization of cortical sensory systems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Md Shoaibur Rahman
- Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, TX, 77030, USA
| | - Kelly Anne Barnes
- Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, TX, 77030, USA; Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences, San Jacinto College - South, Houston, 13735 Beamer Rd, S13.269, Houston, TX, 77089, USA
| | - Lexi E Crommett
- Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, TX, 77030, USA
| | - Mark Tommerdahl
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB No. 7575, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599, USA
| | - Jeffrey M Yau
- Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, TX, 77030, USA.
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Hagiwara K, Ogata K, Hironaga N, Tobimatsu S. Secondary somatosensory area is involved in vibrotactile temporal-structure processing: MEG analysis of slow cortical potential shifts in humans. Somatosens Mot Res 2020; 37:222-232. [PMID: 32597279 DOI: 10.1080/08990220.2020.1784127] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/12/2023]
Abstract
Purpose: Temporal-structure discrimination is an essential dimension of tactile processing. Exploring object surface by touch generates vibrotactile input with various temporal dynamics, which gives diversity to tactile percepts. Here, we examined whether slow cortical potential shifts (SCPs) (<1 Hz) evoked by long vibrotactile stimuli can reflect active temporal-structure processing.Materials and methods: Vibrotactile-evoked magnetic brain responses were recorded in 10 right-handed healthy volunteers using a piezoelectric-based stimulator and whole-head magnetoencephalography. A series of vibrotactile train stimuli with various temporal structures were delivered to the right index finger. While all trains consisted of identical number (15) of stimuli delivered within a fixed duration (1500 ms), temporal structures were varied by modulating inter-stimulus intervals (ISIs). Participants judged regularity/irregularity of ISI for each train in the active condition, whereas they ignored the stimuli while performing a visual distraction task in the passive condition. We analysed the spatiotemporal features of SCPs and their behaviour using the minimum norm estimates with the dynamic statistical parametric mapping.Results: SCPs were localized to contralateral primary somatosensory area (S1), contralateral superior temporal gyrus, and contralateral as well as ipsilateral secondary somatosensory areas (S2). A significant enhancement of SCPs was observed in the ipsilateral S2 (S2i) in the active condition, whereas such effects were absent in the other regions. We also found a significant larger amplitude difference between the regular- and irregular-stimulus evoked S2i responses during the active condition than during the passive condition.Conclusions: This study suggests that S2 subserves the temporal dimension of vibrotactile processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Koichi Hagiwara
- Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, Faculty of Medicine, Neurological Institute, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan
| | - Katsuya Ogata
- Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, Faculty of Medicine, Neurological Institute, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan
| | - Naruhito Hironaga
- Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, Faculty of Medicine, Neurological Institute, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan
| | - Shozo Tobimatsu
- Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, Faculty of Medicine, Neurological Institute, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan
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Gupta P, Balasubramaniam N, Chang HY, Tseng FG, Santra TS. A Single-Neuron: Current Trends and Future Prospects. Cells 2020; 9:E1528. [PMID: 32585883 PMCID: PMC7349798 DOI: 10.3390/cells9061528] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/29/2020] [Revised: 06/15/2020] [Accepted: 06/19/2020] [Indexed: 12/11/2022] Open
Abstract
The brain is an intricate network with complex organizational principles facilitating a concerted communication between single-neurons, distinct neuron populations, and remote brain areas. The communication, technically referred to as connectivity, between single-neurons, is the center of many investigations aimed at elucidating pathophysiology, anatomical differences, and structural and functional features. In comparison with bulk analysis, single-neuron analysis can provide precise information about neurons or even sub-neuron level electrophysiology, anatomical differences, pathophysiology, structural and functional features, in addition to their communications with other neurons, and can promote essential information to understand the brain and its activity. This review highlights various single-neuron models and their behaviors, followed by different analysis methods. Again, to elucidate cellular dynamics in terms of electrophysiology at the single-neuron level, we emphasize in detail the role of single-neuron mapping and electrophysiological recording. We also elaborate on the recent development of single-neuron isolation, manipulation, and therapeutic progress using advanced micro/nanofluidic devices, as well as microinjection, electroporation, microelectrode array, optical transfection, optogenetic techniques. Further, the development in the field of artificial intelligence in relation to single-neurons is highlighted. The review concludes with between limitations and future prospects of single-neuron analyses.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pallavi Gupta
- Department of Engineering Design, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Tamil Nadu 600036, India; (P.G.); (N.B.)
| | - Nandhini Balasubramaniam
- Department of Engineering Design, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Tamil Nadu 600036, India; (P.G.); (N.B.)
| | - Hwan-You Chang
- Department of Medical Science, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan;
| | - Fan-Gang Tseng
- Department of Engineering and System Science, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan;
| | - Tuhin Subhra Santra
- Department of Engineering Design, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Tamil Nadu 600036, India; (P.G.); (N.B.)
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45
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Gao L, Wang X. Subthreshold Activity Underlying the Diversity and Selectivity of the Primary Auditory Cortex Studied by Intracellular Recordings in Awake Marmosets. Cereb Cortex 2020; 29:994-1005. [PMID: 29377991 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhy006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/26/2017] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Extracellular recording studies have revealed diverse and selective neural responses in the primary auditory cortex (A1) of awake animals. However, we have limited knowledge on subthreshold events that give rise to these responses, especially in non-human primates, as intracellular recordings in awake animals pose substantial technical challenges. We developed a novel intracellular recording technique in awake marmosets to systematically study subthreshold activity of A1 neurons that underlies their diverse and selective spiking responses. Our findings showed that in contrast to predominantly transient depolarization observed in A1 of anesthetized animals, both transient and sustained depolarization (during or beyond the stimulus period) were observed. Comparing with spiking responses, subthreshold responses were often longer lasting in duration and more broadly tuned in frequency, and showed narrower intensity tuning in non-monotonic neurons and lower response threshold in monotonic neurons. These observations demonstrated the enhancement of stimulus selectivity from subthreshold to spiking responses in individual A1 neurons. Furthermore, A1 neurons classified as regular- or fast-spiking subpopulation based on their spike shapes exhibited distinct response properties in frequency and intensity domains. These findings provide valuable insights into cortical integration and transformation of auditory information at the cellular level in auditory cortex of awake non-human primates.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lixia Gao
- Laboratory of Auditory Neurophysiology, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA.,Interdisciplinary Institute of Neuroscience and Technology, Qiushi Academy for Advanced Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, People's Republic of China
| | - Xiaoqin Wang
- Laboratory of Auditory Neurophysiology, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
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46
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Mikkelsen M, He J, Tommerdahl M, Edden RAE, Mostofsky SH, Puts NAJ. Reproducibility of flutter-range vibrotactile detection and discrimination thresholds. Sci Rep 2020; 10:6528. [PMID: 32300187 PMCID: PMC7162987 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-63208-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/16/2019] [Accepted: 02/18/2020] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
Somatosensory processing can be probed empirically through vibrotactile psychophysical experiments. Psychophysical approaches are valuable for investigating both normal and abnormal tactile function in healthy and clinical populations. To date, the test-retest reliability of vibrotactile detection and discrimination thresholds has yet to be established. This study sought to assess the reproducibility of vibrotactile detection and discrimination thresholds in human adults using an established vibrotactile psychophysical battery. Fifteen healthy adults underwent three repeat sessions of an eleven-task battery that measured a range of vibrotactile measures, including reaction time, detection threshold, amplitude and frequency discrimination, and temporal order judgement. Coefficients of variation and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were calculated for the measures in each task. Linear mixed-effects models were used to test for length and training effects and differences between tasks within the same domain. Reaction times were shown to be the most reproducible (ICC: ~0.9) followed by detection thresholds (ICC: ~0.7). Frequency discrimination thresholds were the least reproducible (ICC: ~0.3). As reported in prior studies, significant differences in measures between related tasks were also found, demonstrating the reproducibility of task-related effects. These findings show that vibrotactile detection and discrimination thresholds are reliable, further supporting the use of psychophysical experiments to probe tactile function.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mark Mikkelsen
- Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
- F. M. Kirby Research Center for Functional Brain Imaging, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA
| | - Jason He
- Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
| | - Mark Tommerdahl
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
| | - Richard A E Edden
- Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
- F. M. Kirby Research Center for Functional Brain Imaging, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA
| | - Stewart H Mostofsky
- Center for Neurodevelopmental and Imaging Research, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA
- Department of Neurology, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
| | - Nicolaas A J Puts
- Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA.
- F. M. Kirby Research Center for Functional Brain Imaging, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA.
- Department of Forensic and Neurodevelopmental Sciences, Sackler Institute for Translational Neurodevelopment, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, King's College London, London, UK.
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47
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Gilad A, Helmchen F. Spatiotemporal refinement of signal flow through association cortex during learning. Nat Commun 2020; 11:1744. [PMID: 32269226 PMCID: PMC7142160 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15534-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 29] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/02/2019] [Accepted: 03/12/2020] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Association areas in neocortex encode novel stimulus-outcome relationships, but the principles of their engagement during task learning remain elusive. Using chronic wide-field calcium imaging, we reveal two phases of spatiotemporal refinement of layer 2/3 cortical activity in mice learning whisker-based texture discrimination in the dark. Even before mice reach learning threshold, association cortex-including rostro-lateral (RL), posteromedial (PM), and retrosplenial dorsal (RD) areas-is generally suppressed early during trials (between auditory start cue and whisker-texture touch). As learning proceeds, a spatiotemporal activation sequence builds up, spreading from auditory areas to RL immediately before texture touch (whereas PM and RD remain suppressed) and continuing into barrel cortex, which eventually efficiently discriminates between textures. Additional correlation analysis substantiates this diverging learning-related refinement within association cortex. Our results indicate that a pre-learning phase of general suppression in association cortex precedes a learning-related phase of task-specific signal flow enhancement.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ariel Gilad
- Brain Research Institute, University of Zurich, CH-8057, Zurich, Switzerland
- Department of Medical Neurobiology, Institute for Medical Research Israel Canada, Faculty of Medicine, The Hebrew University, 9112001, Jerusalem, Israel
| | - Fritjof Helmchen
- Brain Research Institute, University of Zurich, CH-8057, Zurich, Switzerland.
- Neuroscience Center Zurich, CH-8057, Zurich, Switzerland.
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48
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Romo R, Rossi-Pool R. Turning Touch into Perception. Neuron 2020; 105:16-33. [PMID: 31917952 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2019.11.033] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/11/2019] [Revised: 11/16/2019] [Accepted: 11/27/2019] [Indexed: 12/27/2022]
Abstract
Many brain areas modulate their activity during vibrotactile tasks. The activity from these areas may code the stimulus parameters, stimulus perception, or perceptual reports. Here, we discuss findings obtained in behaving monkeys aimed to understand these processes. In brief, neurons from the somatosensory thalamus and primary somatosensory cortex (S1) only code the stimulus parameters during the stimulation periods. In contrast, areas downstream of S1 code the stimulus parameters during not only the task components but also perception. Surprisingly, the midbrain dopamine system is an actor not considered before in perception. We discuss the evidence that it codes the subjective magnitude of a sensory percept. The findings reviewed here may help us to understand where and how sensation transforms into perception in the brain.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ranulfo Romo
- Instituto de Fisiología Celular - Neurociencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 04510 Mexico City, Mexico; El Colegio Nacional, 06020 Mexico City, Mexico.
| | - Román Rossi-Pool
- Instituto de Fisiología Celular - Neurociencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 04510 Mexico City, Mexico.
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49
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Jiang X, Wang Y, Li X, Wang L, Zhou YD, Wang H. A Simple and Compact MR-Compatible Electromagnetic Vibrotactile Stimulator. Front Neurosci 2020; 13:1403. [PMID: 32009884 PMCID: PMC6978794 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2019.01403] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/24/2019] [Accepted: 12/12/2019] [Indexed: 12/26/2022] Open
Abstract
We have developed a low-cost electromagnetic vibrotactile stimulator that uses the magnetic field of an MR scanner as a permanent magnet to power a vibrating motor. A simple variable current power supply is controlled by software using a USB data acquisition controller. In our study, the function of our novel stimulator was verified in a vibration frequency discrimination working memory task, in which various ranges of frequencies and amplitudes are delivered in MRI scanner. Furthermore, our functional MRI study revealed activations of the primary and secondary somatosensory cortices during the perception of tactile stimulation. Therefore, the new designed electromagnetic vibrotactile stimulator is capable of generating various frequencies of tactile stimuli and represents a powerful and useful tool for studying somatosensory functions with functional MRI.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xinjian Jiang
- Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics (MOE & STCSM), School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
| | - Yueqian Wang
- Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics (MOE & STCSM), School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
| | - Xiaojin Li
- Department of Electronic Engineering, School of Information Science and Technology, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
| | - Liping Wang
- Key Laboratory of Primate Neurobiology, CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China
| | - Yong-Di Zhou
- Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics (MOE & STCSM), School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
| | - Huimin Wang
- Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics (MOE & STCSM), School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
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50
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Lee JH, Wang X, Bendor D. The role of adaptation in generating monotonic rate codes in auditory cortex. PLoS Comput Biol 2020; 16:e1007627. [PMID: 32069272 PMCID: PMC7048304 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007627] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/15/2019] [Revised: 02/28/2020] [Accepted: 01/02/2020] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
In primary auditory cortex, slowly repeated acoustic events are represented temporally by the stimulus-locked activity of single neurons. Single-unit studies in awake marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) have shown that a sub-population of these neurons also monotonically increase or decrease their average discharge rate during stimulus presentation for higher repetition rates. Building on a computational single-neuron model that generates stimulus-locked responses with stimulus evoked excitation followed by strong inhibition, we find that stimulus-evoked short-term depression is sufficient to produce synchronized monotonic positive and negative responses to slowly repeated stimuli. By exploring model robustness and comparing it to other models for adaptation to such stimuli, we conclude that short-term depression best explains our observations in single-unit recordings in awake marmosets. Together, our results show how a simple biophysical mechanism in single neurons can generate complementary neural codes for acoustic stimuli.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jong Hoon Lee
- Laboratory of Auditory Neurophysiology, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
- Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience, Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Xiaoqin Wang
- Laboratory of Auditory Neurophysiology, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
| | - Daniel Bendor
- Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience, Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
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