Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China.
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Center for Visual Science, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627.
J Neurosci. 2021 Apr 7;41(14):3254-3265. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2275-20.2021. Epub 2021 Feb 23.
Perceptual decision-making is increasingly being understood to involve an interaction between bottom-up sensory-driven signals and top-down choice-driven signals, but how these signals interact to mediate perception is not well understood. The parieto-insular vestibular cortex (PIVC) is an area with prominent vestibular responsiveness, and previous work has shown that inactivating PIVC impairs vestibular heading judgments. To investigate the nature of PIVC's contribution to heading perception, we recorded extracellularly from PIVC neurons in two male rhesus macaques during a heading discrimination task, and compared findings with data from previous studies of dorsal medial superior temporal (MSTd) and ventral intraparietal (VIP) areas using identical stimuli. By computing partial correlations between neural responses, heading, and choice, we find that PIVC activity reflects a dynamically changing combination of sensory and choice signals. In addition, the sensory and choice signals are more balanced in PIVC, in contrast to the sensory dominance in MSTd and choice dominance in VIP. Interestingly, heading and choice signals in PIVC are negatively correlated during the middle portion of the stimulus epoch, reflecting a mismatch in the polarity of heading and choice signals. We anticipate that these results will help unravel the mechanisms of interaction between bottom-up sensory signals and top-down choice signals in perceptual decision-making, leading to more comprehensive models of self-motion perception. Vestibular information is important for our perception of self-motion, and various cortical regions in primates show vestibular heading selectivity. Inactivation of the macaque vestibular cortex substantially impairs the precision of vestibular heading discrimination, more so than inactivation of other multisensory areas. Here, we record for the first time from the vestibular cortex while monkeys perform a forced-choice heading discrimination task, and we compare results with data collected previously from other multisensory cortical areas. We find that vestibular cortex activity reflects a dynamically changing combination of sensory and choice signals, with both similarities and notable differences with other multisensory areas.
知觉决策越来越被认为涉及到自下而上的感觉驱动信号和自上而下的选择驱动信号之间的相互作用，但这些信号如何相互作用来调节感知还不是很清楚。岛盖部前庭皮层（PIVC）是一个前庭反应显著的区域，先前的工作表明，PIVC 的失活会损害前庭朝向判断。为了研究 PIVC 对朝向感知的贡献性质，我们在两只雄性恒河猴进行朝向辨别任务时，从 PIVC 神经元中记录了细胞外电活动，并将发现与以前使用相同刺激的背内侧上颞（MSTd）和腹侧顶内（VIP）区域的研究数据进行了比较。通过计算神经反应、朝向和选择之间的偏相关，我们发现 PIVC 活动反映了感觉和选择信号的动态变化组合。此外，与 MSTd 的感觉优势和 VIP 的选择优势相比，PIVC 中的感觉和选择信号更为平衡。有趣的是，在刺激时段的中间部分，PIVC 中的朝向和选择信号呈负相关，反映了朝向和选择信号极性的不匹配。我们预计这些结果将有助于揭示知觉决策中自下而上的感觉信号和自上而下的选择信号之间相互作用的机制，从而为自我运动感知建立更全面的模型。前庭信息对于我们对自我运动的感知很重要，灵长类动物的各种皮质区域都显示出前庭朝向选择性。猕猴前庭皮层的失活会大大降低前庭朝向辨别精度，比其他多感觉区域的失活更严重。在这里，我们首次在猴子执行强制选择朝向辨别任务时记录了前庭皮层的电活动，并将结果与以前从其他多感觉皮层区域收集的数据进行了比较。我们发现，前庭皮层活动反映了感觉和选择信号的动态变化组合，与其他多感觉区域既有相似之处，也有明显的不同。
