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Published on: February 8, 2020
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Mice Preferentially Use Increases in Cerebral Cortex Spiking to Detect Changes in Visual Stimuli.
Jackson J Cone1, Morgan L Bade2, Nicolas Y Masse2
1Department of Neurobiology and Grossman Institute for Neuroscience, Quantitative Biology and Human Behavior, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637 jackson.j.cone@gmail.com.
Summary
Neurons in the visual cortex (V1) signal changes by increasing or decreasing firing rates. This study shows that perception relies on increased V1 spiking, not decreased spiking, for effective visual detection.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Computational Neuroscience
- Visual System
Background:
- Neuronal activity in the visual cortex (V1) changes dynamically with visual input.
- Understanding how neuronal firing patterns relate to perception and behavior is key to deciphering neural computation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether increases or decreases in V1 neuronal spiking are used for visual perception.
- To determine if V1 spike count increments or instantaneous firing changes drive behavioral responses.
Main Methods:
- Mice were trained on visual detection tasks.
- Optogenetics was used to selectively increase or decrease neuronal spiking in V1.
- Analysis focused on perceptual reports and spike count integration.
Main Results:
- Perceptual reports improved with increased V1 spiking and worsened with decreased V1 spiking.
- Detection of cortical activity changes depended on integrated spike counts, not instantaneous changes.
- Both mice and trained neural networks utilized activity increments for task performance.
Conclusions:
- The cerebral cortex may preferentially use increments in V1 spiking to convey information for guiding behavior.
- This suggests a specific neuronal decoding strategy where increases in firing are critical for perception.
