scholarly journals The influence of visual cortex on perception is modulated by behavioural state

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lloyd E. Russell ◽  
Zidan Yang ◽  
Pei Lynn Tan ◽  
Mehmet Fişek ◽  
Adam M. Packer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Stimulus ◽  
Visual Stimulation ◽  
Cortical Activity ◽  
Cortical Stimulation ◽  
Sensory Cortex ◽  
Local Network ◽  
Low Contrast ◽  
Two Photon ◽  
Behavioural State

Our understanding of the link between neural activity and perception remains incomplete. Microstimulation and optogenetic experiments have shown that manipulating cortical activity can influence sensory-guided behaviour or elicit artificial percepts. And yet, some perceptual tasks can still be solved when sensory cortex is silenced or removed, suggesting that cortical activity may not always be essential. Reconciling these findings, and providing a quantitative framework linking cortical activity and behaviour, requires knowledge of the identity of the cells being activated during the behaviour, the engagement of the local and downstream networks, and the cortical and behavioural state. Here, we performed two-photon population calcium imaging in L2/3 primary visual cortex (V1) of headfixed mice performing a visual detection task while simultaneously activating specific groups of neurons using targeted two-photon optogenetics during low contrast visual stimulation. Only activation of groups of cells with similar tuning to the relevant visual stimulus led to a measurable bias of detection behaviour. Targeted photostimulation revealed signatures of centre-surround, predominantly inhibitory and like-to-like connectivity motifs in the local network which shaped the visual stimulus representation and partially explained the change in stimulus detectability. Moreover, the behavioural effects depended on overall performance: when the task was challenging for the mouse, V1 activity was more closely linked to performance, and cortical stimulation boosted perception. In contrast, when the task was easy, V1 activity was less informative about performance and cortical stimulation suppressed stimulus detection. Altogether, we find that both the selective routing of information through functionally specific circuits, and the prevailing cortical state, make similarly large contributions to explaining the behavioural response to photostimulation. Our results thus help to reconcile contradictory findings about the involvement of primary sensory cortex in behavioural tasks, suggesting that the influence of cortical activity on behaviour is dynamically reassigned depending on the demands of the task.

scholarly journals Theta Phase-Dependent Modulation of Perception by Concurrent tACS and Periodic Visual Stimulation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elif Somer ◽  
John Allen ◽  
Joseph Brooks ◽  
Vaughan Buttrill ◽  
Amir-Homayoun Javadi
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Stimulus ◽  
Auditory Perception ◽  
Visual Stimulation ◽  
Sensory Perception ◽  
Oscillatory Activity ◽  
Matching Task ◽  
Phase 0 ◽  
Theta Frequency ◽  
Visual Matching

AbstractBackgroundSensory perception can be modulated by the phase of neural oscillations, especially in the theta and alpha ranges. Oscillatory activity in the visual cortex can be entrained by transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) as well as periodic visual stimulation (i.e., flicker). Combined tACS and visual flicker stimulation modulates blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) responses and concurrent 4 Hz auditory click-trains and tACS modulates auditory perception in a phase-dependent way.ObjectiveIn the present study, we investigated if phase synchrony between concurrent tACS and periodic visual stimulation (i.e., flicker) can modulate performance on a visual matching task.MethodsParticipants completed a visual matching task on a flickering visual stimulus while receiving either in-phase (0 degree) or asynchronous (180, 90, or 270 degrees) tACS at alpha or theta frequency. Stimulation was applied over either occipital cortex or dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC).ResultsVisual performance was significantly better during theta frequency tACS over the visual cortex when it was in-phase (0 degree) with visual stimulus flicker, compared to anti-phase (180 degree). This effect did not appear with alpha frequency flicker or with DLPFC stimulation. Furthermore, a control sham group showed no effect. There were no significant performance differences amongst the asynchronous (180, 90, and 270 degrees) phase conditions.ConclusionExtending previous studies on visual and auditory perception, our results support a crucial role of oscillatory phase in sensory perception and demonstrate a behaviourally relevant combination of visual flicker and tACS. The spatial and frequency specificity of our results have implications for research on the functional organisation of perception.

scholarly journals A machine-learning algorithm correctly classifies cortical evoked potentials from both natural retinal stimulation and electrical stimulation of the optic nerve

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivien Gaillet ◽  
Elodie Geneviève Zollinger ◽  
Diego Ghezzi
Keyword(s):  
Electrical Stimulation ◽  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Optic Nerve ◽  
Visual Field ◽  
Primary Visual Cortex ◽  
Nerve Stimulation ◽  
Visual Stimulation ◽  
Cortical Activity ◽  
Artificial Vision ◽  
Optic Nerve Stimulation

AbstractObjectiveOptic nerve’s intraneural stimulation is an emerging neuroprosthetic approach to provide artificial vision to totally blind patients. An open question is the possibility to evoke individual non-overlapping phosphenes via selective intraneural optic nerve stimulation. To begin answering this question, first, we aim at showing in preclinical experiments with animals that each intraneural electrode could evoke a distinguishable activity pattern in the primary visual cortex.ApproachWe performed both patterned visual stimulation and patterned electrical stimulation in healthy rabbits while recording evoked cortical activity with an electrocorticogram array in the primary visual cortex. Electrical stimulation was delivered to the optic nerve with the intraneural array OpticSELINE. We used a support vector machine algorithm paired to a linear regression model to classify cortical responses originating from visual stimuli located in different portions of the visual field and electrical stimuli from the different electrodes of the OpticSELINE.Main resultsCortical activity induced by visual and electrical stimulation could be classified with nearly 100% accuracy relative to the specific location in the visual field or electrode in the array from which it originated. For visual stimulation, the accuracy increased with the separation of the stimuli and reached 100% for separation higher than 7 degrees. For electrical stimulation, at low current amplitudes, the accuracy increased with the distance between electrodes, while at higher current amplitudes, the accuracy was nearly 100% already for the shortest separation.SignificanceOptic nerve’s intraneural stimulation with the OpticSELINE induced discernible cortical activity patterns. These results represent a leap forward for intraneural optic nerve stimulation towards artificial vision.

scholarly journals Cortical subnetworks encode context of visual stimulus

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan P. Hamm ◽  
Yuriy Shymkiv ◽  
Shuting Han ◽  
Weijian Yang ◽  
Rafael Yuste
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Stimulus ◽  
Sensory Processing ◽  
Calcium Imaging ◽  
Cortical Circuits ◽  
Fundamental Function ◽  
Stimulus Context ◽  
Contextual Modulation ◽  
Two Photon ◽  
Cortical Responses

AbstractCortical processing of sensory events is significantly influenced by context. For instance, a repetitive or redundant visual stimulus elicits attenuated cortical responses, but if the same stimulus is unexpected or “deviant”, responses are augmented. This contextual modulation of sensory processing is likely a fundamental function of neural circuits, yet an understanding of how it is computed is still missing. Using holographic two-photon calcium imaging in awake animals, here we identify three distinct, spatially intermixed ensembles of neurons in mouse primary visual cortex which differentially respond to the same stimulus under separate contexts, including a subnetwork which selectively responds to deviant events. These non-overlapping ensembles are distributed across layers 2-5, though deviance detection is more common in superficial layers. Contextual preferences likely arise locally since they are not present in bottom up inputs from the thalamus or top-down inputs from prefrontal cortex. The functional parcellation of cortical circuits into independent ensembles that encode stimulus context provides a circuit basis underlying cortically based perception of novel or redundant stimuli, a key deficit in many psychiatric disorders.One Sentence SummaryVisual cortex represents deviant and redundant stimuli with separate subnetworks.

scholarly journals Sensory cortical dynamics during optical microstimulation training

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ravi Pancholi ◽  
Lauren Ryan ◽  
Simon P Peron
Keyword(s):  
Somatosensory Cortex ◽  
Calcium Imaging ◽  
Pyramidal Neurons ◽  
Cortical Activity ◽  
Sensory Cortex ◽  
Cortical Processing ◽  
Cortical Dynamics ◽  
Two Photon ◽  
Primary Sensory Cortex ◽  
Impact Perception

Primary sensory cortex is a key locus of plasticity during learning. Exposure to novel stimuli often alters cortical activity, but isolating cortex-specific dynamics is challenging due to extensive pre-cortical processing. Here, we employ optical microstimulation of pyramidal neurons in layer (L) 2/3 of mouse primary vibrissal somatosensory cortex (vS1) to study cortical dynamics as mice learn to discriminate microstimulation intensity. Tracking activity over weeks using two-photon calcium imaging, we observe a rapid sparsification of the photoresponsive population, with the most responsive neurons exhibiting the largest declines in responsiveness. Following sparsification, the photoresponsive population attains a stable rate of neuronal turnover. At the same time, the photoresponsive population increasingly overlaps with populations encoding whisker movement and touch. Finally, we find that mice with larger declines in responsiveness learn the task more slowly than mice with smaller declines. Our results reveal that microstimulation-evoked cortical activity undergoes extensive reorganization during task learning and that the dynamics of this reorganization impact perception.

scholarly journals Population Dynamics of Early Visual Cortex during Working Memory

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masih Rahmati ◽  
Golbarg T. Saber ◽  
Clayton E. Curtis
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Population Dynamics ◽  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
Visual Stimulus ◽  
Visual Stimulation ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Population Activity ◽  
Early Visual Cortex

Although the content of working memory (WM) can be decoded from the spatial patterns of brain activity in early visual cortex, how populations encode WM representations remains unclear. Here, we address this limitation by using a model-based approach that reconstructs the feature encoded by population activity measured with fMRI. Using this approach, we could successfully reconstruct the locations of memory-guided saccade goals based on the pattern of activity in visual cortex during a memory delay. We could reconstruct the saccade goal even when we dissociated the visual stimulus from the saccade goal using a memory-guided antisaccade procedure. By comparing the spatiotemporal population dynamics, we find that the representations in visual cortex are stable but can also evolve from a representation of a remembered visual stimulus to a prospective goal. Moreover, because the representation of the antisaccade goal cannot be the result of bottom–up visual stimulation, it must be evoked by top–down signals presumably originating from frontal and/or parietal cortex. Indeed, we find that trial-by-trial fluctuations in delay period activity in frontal and parietal cortex correlate with the precision with which our model reconstructed the maintained saccade goal based on the pattern of activity in visual cortex. Therefore, the population dynamics in visual cortex encode WM representations, and these representations can be sculpted by top–down signals from frontal and parietal cortex.

scholarly journals Color and orientation are jointly coded and spatially organized in primate primary visual cortex

Science ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 364 (6447) ◽  
pp. 1275-1279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anupam K. Garg ◽  
Peichao Li ◽  
Mohammad S. Rashid ◽  
Edward M. Callaway
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Single Cell ◽  
Primary Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Stimulus ◽  
Calcium Imaging ◽  
Stimulus Space ◽  
Single Neurons ◽  
V1 Neurons ◽  
Two Photon ◽  
Rigorous Testing

Previous studies support the textbook model that shape and color are extracted by distinct neurons in primate primary visual cortex (V1). However, rigorous testing of this model requires sampling a larger stimulus space than previously possible. We used stable GCaMP6f expression and two-photon calcium imaging to probe a very large spatial and chromatic visual stimulus space and map functional microarchitecture of thousands of neurons with single-cell resolution. Notable proportions of V1 neurons strongly preferred equiluminant color over achromatic stimuli and were also orientation selective, indicating that orientation and color in V1 are mutually processed by overlapping circuits. Single neurons could precisely and unambiguously code for both color and orientation. Further analyses revealed systematic spatial relationships between color tuning, orientation selectivity, and cytochrome oxidase histology.

scholarly journals Reward timing and its expression by inhibitory interneurons in the mouse primary visual cortex

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin J Monk ◽  
Simon Allard ◽  
Marshall G Hussain Shuler
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Primary Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Stimulus ◽  
Network Architecture ◽  
Sensory Cortex ◽  
Inhibitory Interneurons ◽  
Feature Detector ◽  
Primary Sensory Cortex ◽  
Fixed Delay

AbstractPrimary sensory cortex has historically been studied as a low-level feature detector, but has more recently been implicated in many higher-level cognitive functions. For instance, after an animal learns that a light predicts water at a fixed delay, neurons in primary visual cortex (V1) can produce “reward timing activity” (i.e., spike modulation of various forms that relate the interval between the visual stimulus and expected reward). The manner by which V1 produces these representations is unknown. Here, we combine behavior, in vivo electrophysiology, and optogenetics to investigate the characteristics of and circuit mechanisms underlying V1 reward timing in the head-fixed mouse. We find that reward timing activity is present in mouse V1, that inhibitory interneurons participate in reward timing, and that these representations are consistent with a theorized network architecture. Together, these results deepen our understanding of V1 reward timing and the manner by which it is produced.

scholarly journals Regulation of expression site and generalizability of experience-dependent plasticity in visual cortex

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Crystal L. Lantz ◽  
Sachiko Murase ◽  
Elizabeth M. Quinlan
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Primary Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Stimulus ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Visual Stimulation ◽  
Visual Stimuli ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Visual Response ◽  
Dependent Plasticity ◽  
Primary Mouse

SummaryThe experience-dependent decrease in stimulus detection thresholds that underly perceptual learning can be induced by repetitive exposure to a visual stimulus. Robust stimulus-selective potentiation of visual responses is induced in the primary mouse visual cortex by repetitive low frequency visual stimulation (LFVS). How the parameters of the repetitive visual stimulus impact the site and specificity of this experience-dependent plasticity is currently a subject of debate. Here we demonstrate that the stimulus selective response potentiation induced by repetitive low frequency (1 Hz) stimulation, which is typically limited to layer 4, shifts to superficial layers following manipulations that enhance plasticity in primary visual cortex. In contrast, repetitive high frequency (10 Hz) visual stimulation induces response potentiation that is expressed in layers 4 and 5/6, and generalizes to novel visual stimuli. Repetitive visual stimulation also induces changes in the magnitude and distribution of oscillatory activity in primary visual cortex, however changes in oscillatory power do not predict the locus or specificity of response potentiation. Instead we find that robust response potentiation is induced by visual stimulation that resets the phase of ongoing gamma oscillations. Furthermore, high frequency, but not low frequency, repetitive visual stimulation entrains oscillatory rhythms with enhanced sensitivity to phase reset, such that familiar and novel visual stimuli induce similar visual response potentiation.

scholarly journals Independence of Anticipatory Signals for Spatial Attention From Number of Nontarget Stimuli in the Visual Field

2008 ◽  
Vol 100 (2) ◽  
pp. 829-838 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Sestieri ◽  
C. M. Sylvester ◽  
A. I. Jack ◽  
G. d'Avossa ◽  
G. L. Shulman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Field ◽  
Spatial Attention ◽  
Visual Stimulation ◽  
Blood Oxygenation ◽  
Bold Signal ◽  
Signal Modulation ◽  
Low Contrast ◽  
Upper Visual Field ◽  
Oxygenation Level

Covertly attending to a location modulates the activity of visual areas even in the absence of visual stimulation. These effects are widespread, being found in the cortical representations of both attended and unattended portions of the visual field. It is not clear, however, whether preparatory modulations depend on subjects' expectation regarding the presence of additional nontarget stimuli in the visual field. Here, we asked subjects to endogenously direct attention to a peripheral location in the upper visual field, to identify the orientation of a low-contrast target stimulus, and we manipulated the number and behavioral relevance of other low-contrast nontarget stimuli in the visual field. Anticipatory (i.e., prestimulus) blood oxygenation level–dependent (BOLD) signal increments in visual cortex were strongest at the contralateral attended location, whereas signal decrements were strongest at the unattended mirror-opposite ipsilateral location/region of visual cortex. Importantly, these strong anticipatory decrements were not related to the presence/absence of nontarget low-contrast stimuli and did not correlate with either weaker target-evoked responses or worse performance. Second, the presence of other low-contrast stimuli in the visual field, even when potential targets, did not modify the anticipatory signal modulation either at target or nontarget locations. We conclude that the topography of spatial attention–related anticipatory BOLD signal modulation across visual cortex, specifically decrements at unattended locations, is mainly determined by processes at the cued location and not by the number or behavioral relevance of distant low-contrast nontarget stimuli elsewhere in the visual field.

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