Department of Neuroscience, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260.
Program in Neural Computation, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15260.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020 Nov 24;117(47):29321-29329. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2005797117.
Neuronal population responses to sensory stimuli are remarkably flexible. The responses of neurons in visual cortex have heterogeneous dependence on stimulus properties (e.g., contrast), processes that affect all stages of visual processing (e.g., adaptation), and cognitive processes (e.g., attention or task switching). Understanding whether these processes affect similar neuronal populations and whether they have similar effects on entire populations can provide insight into whether they utilize analogous mechanisms. In particular, it has recently been demonstrated that attention has low rank effects on the covariability of populations of visual neurons, which impacts perception and strongly constrains mechanistic models. We hypothesized that measuring changes in population covariability associated with other sensory and cognitive processes could clarify whether they utilize similar mechanisms or computations. Our experimental design included measurements in multiple visual areas using four distinct sensory and cognitive processes. We found that contrast, adaptation, attention, and task switching affect the variability of responses of populations of neurons in primate visual cortex in a similarly low rank way. These results suggest that a given circuit may use similar mechanisms to perform many forms of modulation and likely reflects a general principle that applies to a wide range of brain areas and sensory, cognitive, and motor processes.
神经元对感觉刺激的反应具有显著的灵活性。视觉皮层中神经元的反应对刺激特性（例如对比度）、影响视觉处理所有阶段的过程（例如适应）和认知过程（例如注意力或任务转换）具有异质的依赖性。了解这些过程是否影响相似的神经元群体，以及它们对整个群体是否有相似的影响，可以深入了解它们是否利用类似的机制。特别是，最近已经证明，注意力对视觉神经元群体的可变性具有低阶效应，这会影响感知并强烈限制机械模型。我们假设，测量与其他感觉和认知过程相关的群体可变性变化，可以阐明它们是否利用类似的机制或计算。我们的实验设计包括使用四种不同的感觉和认知过程在多个视觉区域进行测量。我们发现，对比度、适应、注意力和任务转换以类似的低阶方式影响灵长类动物视觉皮层中神经元群体反应的可变性。这些结果表明，给定的电路可能使用类似的机制来执行多种形式的调制，这可能反映了一种普遍原则，适用于广泛的大脑区域以及感觉、认知和运动过程。
