Moll Felix W, Nieder Andreas
Animal Physiology, Institute of Neurobiology, University of Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 28, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
Animal Physiology, Institute of Neurobiology, University of Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 28, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2017 Jan;137:65-76. doi: 10.1016/j.nlm.2016.11.011. Epub 2016 Nov 15.
Single neuron activity in the corvid nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL), the supposed avian functional analog of the prefrontal cortex, represents associations of auditory with visual stimuli. This is of high adaptive value for songbirds that need to rely on audio-visual associations to communicate, find a mate or escape predators. However, it remains unclear whether NCL neurons can represent cross-modal associations in a modality invariant, abstract fashion. To dissociate between modality-dependent and modality-invariant NCL activity, we trained two crows to match auditory sample cues with visual test stimuli, and vice versa, across a temporal memory delay. During sample presentation, NCL activity selectively encoded associations in a modality invariant fashion. During the delay, we observed subject specific, population-level coding biases in NCL activity. Despite of these biases, task relevant information could be decoded equally well from either subject's neuronal delay activity. Decoding success was facilitated by many mixed selectivity neurons, which mediated high dimensional representations of task variables on the NCL population level. These results parallel findings from the mammalian PFC, suggesting common mechanisms responsible for the adaptability of multimodal association areas across taxa.
鸦科动物尾外侧巢皮质(NCL)中的单个神经元活动,被认为是前额叶皮质在鸟类中的功能类似物,它代表了听觉刺激与视觉刺激的关联。这对于需要依靠视听关联来进行交流、寻找配偶或躲避捕食者的鸣禽具有很高的适应性价值。然而,目前尚不清楚NCL神经元是否能够以一种模态不变的抽象方式来表征跨模态关联。为了区分依赖模态和不依赖模态的NCL活动,我们训练了两只乌鸦,使其在时间记忆延迟的情况下,将听觉样本线索与视觉测试刺激进行匹配,反之亦然。在样本呈现期间,NCL活动以模态不变的方式选择性地编码关联。在延迟期间,我们在NCL活动中观察到了特定于个体的群体水平编码偏差。尽管存在这些偏差,但与任务相关的信息可以从任一受试者的神经元延迟活动中同样良好地解码出来。许多混合选择性神经元促进了解码的成功,这些神经元在NCL群体水平上介导了任务变量的高维表征。这些结果与哺乳动物前额叶皮质的研究结果相似,表明跨分类群的多模态关联区域适应性存在共同机制。