School of Cognitive Sciences (SCS), Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), PO Box 1954851167, Tehran, Iran.
Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana 59717, USA.
Nat Commun. 2017 Apr 27;8:15041. doi: 10.1038/ncomms15041.
Prefrontal cortex modulates sensory signals in extrastriate visual cortex, in part via its direct projections from the frontal eye field (FEF), an area involved in selective attention. We find that working memory-related activity is a dominant signal within FEF input to visual cortex. Although this signal alone does not evoke spiking responses in areas V4 and MT during memory, the gain of visual responses in these areas increases, and neuronal receptive fields expand and shift towards the remembered location, improving the stimulus representation by neuronal populations. These results provide a basis for enhancing the representation of working memory targets and implicate persistent FEF activity as a basis for the interdependence of working memory and selective attention.
前额皮质通过其来自额眼区（FEF）的直接投射，对视觉皮层中的感觉信号进行调节，而 FEF 是参与选择性注意的区域。我们发现，与工作记忆相关的活动是 FEF 输入到视觉皮层的主要信号。尽管该信号本身不能在记忆过程中引起 V4 和 MT 区的尖峰反应，但这些区域的视觉反应增益增加，神经元感受野扩大并向记忆位置转移，从而通过神经元群体改善了刺激的表示。这些结果为增强工作记忆目标的表示提供了基础，并表明持续的 FEF 活动是工作记忆和选择性注意相互依存的基础。
