scholarly journals Frontal eye field microstimulation induces task-dependent gamma oscillations in the lateral intraparietal area

2012 ◽  
Vol 108 (5) ◽  
pp. 1392-1402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elsie Premereur ◽  
Wim Vanduffel ◽  
Pieter R. Roelfsema ◽  
Peter Janssen

Macaque frontal eye fields (FEF) and the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) are high-level oculomotor control centers that have been implicated in the allocation of spatial attention. Electrical microstimulation of macaque FEF elicits functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activations in area LIP, but no study has yet investigated the effect of FEF microstimulation on LIP at the single-cell or local field potential (LFP) level. We recorded spiking and LFP activity in area LIP during weak, subthreshold microstimulation of the FEF in a delayed-saccade task. FEF microstimulation caused a highly time- and frequency-specific, task-dependent increase in gamma power in retinotopically corresponding sites in LIP: FEF microstimulation produced a significant increase in LIP gamma power when a saccade target appeared and remained present in the LIP receptive field (RF), whereas less specific increases in alpha power were evoked by FEF microstimulation for saccades directed away from the RF. Stimulating FEF with weak currents had no effect on LIP spike rates or on the gamma power during memory saccades or passive fixation. These results provide the first evidence for task-dependent modulations of LFPs in LIP caused by top-down stimulation of FEF. Since the allocation and disengagement of spatial attention in visual cortex have been associated with increases in gamma and alpha power, respectively, the effects of FEF microstimulation on LIP are consistent with the known effects of spatial attention.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agrita Dubey ◽  
Supratim Ray

AbstractElectrocorticogram (ECoG), obtained from macroelectrodes placed on the cortex, is typically used in drug-resistant epilepsy patients, and is increasingly being used to study cognition in humans. These studies often use power in gamma (30-70 Hz) or high-gamma (>80 Hz) ranges to make inferences about neural processing. However, while the stimulus tuning properties of gamma/high-gamma power have been well characterized in local field potential (LFP; obtained from microelectrodes), analogous characterization has not been done for ECoG. Using a hybrid array containing both micro and ECoG electrodes implanted in the primary visual cortex of two female macaques, we compared the stimulus tuning preferences of gamma/high-gamma power in LFP versus ECoG and found them to be surprisingly similar. High-gamma power, thought to index the average firing rate around the electrode, was highest for the smallest stimulus (0.3° radius), and decreased with increasing size in both LFP and ECoG, suggesting local origins of both signals. Further, gamma oscillations were similarly tuned in LFP and ECoG to stimulus orientation, contrast and spatial frequency. This tuning was significantly weaker in electroencephalogram (EEG), suggesting that ECoG is more like LFP than EEG. Overall, our results validate the use of ECoG in clinical and basic cognitive research.


2011 ◽  
Vol 105 (5) ◽  
pp. 2005-2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Devarajan Sridharan ◽  
Kwabena Boahen ◽  
Eric I. Knudsen

Gamma-band (25–140 Hz) oscillations of the local field potential (LFP) are evoked by sensory stimuli in the mammalian forebrain and may be strongly modulated in amplitude when animals attend to these stimuli. The optic tectum (OT) is a midbrain structure known to contribute to multimodal sensory processing, gaze control, and attention. We found that presentation of spatially localized stimuli, either visual or auditory, evoked robust gamma oscillations with distinctive properties in the superficial (visual) layers and in the deep (multimodal) layers of the owl's OT. Across layers, gamma power was tuned sharply for stimulus location and represented space topographically. In the superficial layers, induced LFP power peaked strongly in the low-gamma band (25–90 Hz) and increased gradually with visual contrast across a wide range of contrasts. Spikes recorded in these layers included presumptive axonal (input) spikes that encoded stimulus properties nearly identically with gamma oscillations and were tightly phase locked with the oscillations, suggesting that they contribute to the LFP oscillations. In the deep layers, induced LFP power was distributed across the low and high (90–140 Hz) gamma-bands and tended to reach its maximum value at relatively low visual contrasts. In these layers, gamma power was more sharply tuned for stimulus location, on average, than were somatic spike rates, and somatic spikes synchronized with gamma oscillations. Such gamma synchronized discharges of deep-layer neurons could provide a high-resolution temporal code for signaling the location of salient sensory stimuli.


Author(s):  
Kelsey L. Clark ◽  
Behrad Noudoost ◽  
Robert J. Schafer ◽  
Tirin Moore

Covert spatial attention prioritizes the processing of stimuli at a given peripheral location, away from the direction of gaze, and selectively enhances visual discrimination, speed of processing, contrast sensitivity, and spatial resolution at the attended location. While correlates of this type of attention, which are believed to underlie perceptual benefits, have been found in a variety of visual cortical areas, more recent observations suggest that these effects may originate from frontal and parietal areas. Evidence for a causal role in attention is especially robust for the Frontal Eye Field, an oculomotor area within the prefrontal cortex. FEF firing rates have been shown to reflect the location of voluntarily deployed covert attention in a variety of tasks, and these changes in firing rate precede those observed in extrastriate cortex. In addition, manipulation of FEF activity—whether via electrical microstimulation, pharmacologically, or operant conditioning—can produce attention-like effects on behaviour and can modulate neural signals within posterior visual areas. We review this evidence and discuss the role of the FEF in visual spatial attention.


2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 1314-1330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elsie Premereur ◽  
Wim Vanduffel ◽  
Peter Janssen

Oscillatory brain activity is attracting increasing interest in cognitive neuroscience. Numerous EEG (magnetoencephalography) and local field potential (LFP) measurements have related cognitive functions to different types of brain oscillations, but the functional significance of these rhythms remains poorly understood. Despite its proven value, LFP activity has not been extensively tested in the macaque lateral intraparietal area (LIP), which has been implicated in a wide variety of cognitive control processes. We recorded action potentials and LFPs in area LIP during delayed eye movement tasks and during a passive fixation task, in which the time schedule was fixed so that temporal expectations about task-relevant cues could be formed. LFP responses in the gamma band discriminated reliably between saccade targets and distractors inside the receptive field (RF). Alpha and beta responses were much less strongly affected by the presence of a saccade target, however, but rose sharply in the waiting period before the go signal. Surprisingly, conditions without visual stimulation of the LIP-RF-evoked robust LFP responses in every frequency band—most prominently in those below 50 Hz—precisely time-locked to the expected time of stimulus onset in the RF. These results indicate that in area LIP, oscillations in the LFP, which reflect synaptic input and local network activity, are tightly coupled to the temporal expectation of task-relevant cues.


2003 ◽  
Vol 89 (3) ◽  
pp. 1414-1422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Vreugdenhil ◽  
John G. R. Jefferys ◽  
Marco R. Celio ◽  
Beat Schwaller

In the hippocampus, the calcium-binding protein parvalbumin (PV) is expressed in interneurons that innervate perisomatic regions. PV in GABAergic synaptic terminals was proposed to limit repetitive GABA release by buffering of “residual calcium.” We assessed the role of presynaptic PV in Ca2+-dependent GABA release in the hippocampus of PV-deficient (PV−/−) mice and wild-type (PV+/+) littermates. Pharmacologically isolated inhibitory postsynaptic currents (IPSCs) were evoked by low-intensity stimulation of the stratum pyramidale and recorded from voltage-clamped CA1 pyramidal neurons. The amplitude and decay time constant of single IPSCs were similar for both genotypes. Under our experimental conditions of reduced release probability and minimal presynaptic suppression, paired-pulse facilitation of IPSCs occurred at intervals from 2 to 50 ms, irrespective of the presence of PV. The facilitation of IPSCs induced by trains of 10 stimuli at frequencies >20 Hz was enhanced in cells from PV−/− mice, the largest difference between PV−/− and PV+/+ animals (220%) being observed at 33 Hz. The effect of IPSC facilitation at sustained gamma frequencies was assessed on kainate-induced rhythmic IPSC-paced neuronal oscillations at gamma frequencies, recorded with dual field potential recordings in area CA3. The maximum power of the oscillation was 138 μV2 at 36 Hz in slices from PV+/+ mice and was trebled in slices from PV−/− mice. PV deficiency caused a similar increase in gamma power under conditions used to study IPSC facilitation and can be explained by an increased facilitation of GABA release at sustained high frequencies. The dominant frequency and coherence were not affected by PV deficiency. These observations suggest that PV deficiency, due to an increased short-term facilitation of GABA release, enhances inhibition by high-frequency burst-firing PV-expressing interneurons and may affect the higher cognitive functions associated with gamma oscillations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 404-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Syeda Mehpara Farhat ◽  
Touqeer Ahmed

Background: Aluminum (Al) causes neurodegeneration and its toxic effects on cholinergic system in the brain is well documented. However, it is unknown whether and how Al changes oscillation patterns, driven by the cholinergic system, in the hippocampus. Objective: We studied acute effects of Al on nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs)-mediated modulation of persistent gamma oscillations in the hippocampus. Method: The field potential recording was done in CA3 area of acute hippocampal slices. Results: Carbachol-induced gamma oscillation peak power increased (1.32±0.09mV2/Hz, P<0.01) in control conditions (without Al) by application of 10µM nicotine as compared to baseline value normalized to 1. This nicotine-induced facilitation of gamma oscillation peak power was found to depend on non-α7 nAChRs. In slices with Al pre-incubation for three to four hours, gamma oscillation peak power was reduced (5.4±1.8mV2/Hz, P<0.05) and facilitatory effect of nicotine on gamma oscillation peak power was blocked as compared to the control (18.06±2.1mV2/Hz) or one hour Al pre-incubated slices (11.3±2.5mV2/Hz). Intriguingly wash-out, after three to four hours of Al incubation, failed to restore baseline oscillation power and its facilitation by nicotine as no difference was observed in gamma oscillation peak power between Al wash-out slices (3.4±1.1mV2/Hz) and slices without washout (3.6±0.9mV2/Hz). Conclusion: This study shows that at cellular level, exposure of hippocampal tissue to Al compromised nAChR-mediated facilitation of cholinergic hippocampal gamma oscillations. Longer in vitro Al exposure caused permanent changes in hippocampal oscillogenic circuitry and changed its sensitivity to nAChR-modulation. This study will help to understand the possible mechanism of cognitive decline induced by Al.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bin Wang ◽  
Chuanliang Han ◽  
Tian Wang ◽  
Weifeng Dai ◽  
Yang Li ◽  
...  

AbstractStimulus-dependence of gamma oscillations (GAMMA, 30–90 Hz) has not been fully understood, but it is important for revealing neural mechanisms and functions of GAMMA. Here, we recorded spiking activity (MUA) and the local field potential (LFP), driven by a variety of plaids (generated by two superimposed gratings orthogonal to each other and with different contrast combinations), in the primary visual cortex of anesthetized cats. We found two distinct narrow-band GAMMAs in the LFPs and a variety of response patterns to plaids. Similar to MUA, most response patterns showed that the second grating suppressed GAMMAs driven by the first one. However, there is only a weak site-by-site correlation between cross-orientation interactions in GAMMAs and those in MUAs. We developed a normalization model that could unify the response patterns of both GAMMAs and MUAs. Interestingly, compared with MUAs, the GAMMAs demonstrated a wider range of model parameters and more diverse response patterns to plaids. Further analysis revealed that normalization parameters for high GAMMA, but not those for low GAMMA, were significantly correlated with the discrepancy of spatial frequency between stimulus and sites’ preferences. Consistent with these findings, normalization parameters and diversity of high GAMMA exhibited a clear transition trend and region difference between area 17 to 18. Our results show that GAMMAs are also regulated in the form of normalization, but that the neural mechanisms for these normalizations might differ from those of spiking activity. Normalizations in different brain signals could be due to interactions of excitation and inhibitions at multiple stages in the visual system.


Author(s):  
Peter Gombkoto ◽  
Matthew Gielow ◽  
Peter Varsanyi ◽  
Candice Chavez ◽  
Laszlo Zaborszky

AbstractBasal forebrain (BF) cholinergic neurons provide the cerebral cortex with acetylcholine. Despite the long-established involvement of these cells in sensory processing, attention, and memory, the mechanisms by which cholinergic signaling regulates cognitive processes remain elusive. In this study, we recorded spiking and local field potential data simultaneously from several locations in the BF, and sites in the orbitofrontal and visual cortex in transgenic ChAT-Cre rats performing a visual discrimination task. We observed distinct differences in the fine spatial distributions of gamma coherence values between specific basalo-cortical and cortico-cortical sites that shifted across task phases. Additionally, cholinergic firing induced spatial changes in cortical gamma power, and optogenetic activation of BF increased coherence between specific cortico-cortical sites, suggesting that the cholinergic system contributes to selective modulation of cortico-cortical circuits. Furthermore, the results suggest that cells in specific BF locations are dynamically recruited across behavioral epochs to coordinate interregional cortical processes underlying cognition.


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