Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599.
Neuroscience Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599.
eNeuro. 2018 Apr 3;5(1). doi: 10.1523/ENEURO.0384-17.2018. eCollection 2018 Jan-Feb.
Higher-order visual thalamus plays a fundamental but poorly understood role in attention-demanding tasks. To investigate how neuronal dynamics in higher-order visual thalamus are modulated by sustained attention, we performed multichannel electrophysiological recordings in the lateral posterior-pulvinar complex (LP/pulvinar) in the ferret (). We recorded single unit activity and local field potential (LFP) during the performance of the five-choice serial reaction time task (5-CSRTT), which is used in both humans and animals as an assay of sustained attention. We found that half of the units exhibited an increasing firing rate during the delay period before stimulus onset (attention-modulated units). In contrast, the non-attention-modulated units responded to the stimulus, but not during the delay period. Spike-field coherence (SFC) of only the attention-modulated neurons significantly increased from the start of the delay period until screen touch, predominantly in the θ frequency band. In addition, θ power and θ/γ phase amplitude coupling (PAC) were elevated throughout the delay period. Our findings suggest that the θ oscillation plays a central role in orchestrating thalamic signaling during sustained attention.
高级视丘在需要注意力的任务中起着基本但尚未被充分理解的作用。为了研究高级视丘神经元动力学如何被持续注意力调节，我们在雪貂的外侧后丘脑-丘脑下核复合体（LP/pulvinar）中进行了多通道电生理记录（）。我们在执行五选择连续反应时间任务（5-CSRTT）期间记录了单个神经元活动和局部场电位（LFP），该任务在人类和动物中都被用作持续注意力的测定。我们发现，有一半的神经元在刺激前的延迟期表现出递增的放电率（注意力调节的神经元）。相比之下，非注意力调节的神经元对刺激有反应，但不在延迟期内。只有注意力调节的神经元的尖峰-场相干（SFC）从延迟期开始显著增加，直到屏幕触摸，主要是在θ频带。此外，θ功率和θ/γ相位幅度耦合（PAC）在整个延迟期都升高。我们的发现表明，θ振荡在持续注意力期间协调丘脑信号传递中起着核心作用。
