23,705 research outputs found
Does Corticothalamic Feedback Control Cortical Velocity Tuning?
The thalamus is the major gate to the cortex and its contribution to cortical
receptive field properties is well established. Cortical feedback to the
thalamus is, in turn, the anatomically dominant input to relay cells, yet its
influence on thalamic processing has been difficult to interpret. For an
understanding of complex sensory processing, detailed concepts of the
corticothalamic interplay need yet to be established. To study
corticogeniculate processing in a model, we draw on various physiological and
anatomical data concerning the intrinsic dynamics of geniculate relay neurons,
the cortical influence on relay modes, lagged and nonlagged neurons, and the
structure of visual cortical receptive fields. In extensive computer
simulations we elaborate the novel hypothesis that the visual cortex controls
via feedback the temporal response properties of geniculate relay cells in a
way that alters the tuning of cortical cells for speed.Comment: 31 pages, 7 figure
Does Corticothalamic Feedback Control Cortical Velocity Tuning?
The thalamus is the major gate to the cortex and its contribution to cortical receptive field properties is well established. Cortical feedback to the thalamus is, in turn, the anatomically dominant input to relay cells, yet its influence on thalamic processing has been difficult to interpret. For an understanding of complex sensory processing, detailed concepts of the corticothalamic interplay need yet to be established. To study corticogeniculate processing in a model, we draw on various physiological and anatomical data concerning the intrinsic dynamics of geniculate relay neurons, the cortical influence on relay modes, lagged and nonlagged neurons, and the structure of visual cortical receptive fields. In extensive computer simulations we elaborate the novel hypothesis that the visual cortex controls via feedback the temporal response properties of geniculate relay cells in a way that alters the tuning of cortical cells for speed
Noninvasive brain stimulation techniques can modulate cognitive processing
Recent methods that allow a noninvasive modulation of brain activity are able to modulate human cognitive behavior. Among these methods are transcranial electric stimulation and transcranial magnetic stimulation that both come in multiple variants. A property of both types of brain stimulation is that they modulate brain activity and in turn modulate cognitive behavior. Here, we describe the methods with their assumed neural mechanisms for readers from the economic and social sciences and little prior knowledge of these techniques. Our emphasis is on available protocols and experimental parameters to choose from when designing a study. We also review a selection of recent studies that have successfully applied them in the respective field. We provide short pointers to limitations that need to be considered and refer to the relevant papers where appropriate
Locking of correlated neural activity to ongoing oscillations
Population-wide oscillations are ubiquitously observed in mesoscopic signals
of cortical activity. In these network states a global oscillatory cycle
modulates the propensity of neurons to fire. Synchronous activation of neurons
has been hypothesized to be a separate channel of signal processing information
in the brain. A salient question is therefore if and how oscillations interact
with spike synchrony and in how far these channels can be considered separate.
Experiments indeed showed that correlated spiking co-modulates with the static
firing rate and is also tightly locked to the phase of beta-oscillations. While
the dependence of correlations on the mean rate is well understood in
feed-forward networks, it remains unclear why and by which mechanisms
correlations tightly lock to an oscillatory cycle. We here demonstrate that
such correlated activation of pairs of neurons is qualitatively explained by
periodically-driven random networks. We identify the mechanisms by which
covariances depend on a driving periodic stimulus. Mean-field theory combined
with linear response theory yields closed-form expressions for the
cyclostationary mean activities and pairwise zero-time-lag covariances of
binary recurrent random networks. Two distinct mechanisms cause time-dependent
covariances: the modulation of the susceptibility of single neurons (via the
external input and network feedback) and the time-varying variances of single
unit activities. For some parameters, the effectively inhibitory recurrent
feedback leads to resonant covariances even if mean activities show
non-resonant behavior. Our analytical results open the question of
time-modulated synchronous activity to a quantitative analysis.Comment: 57 pages, 12 figures, published versio
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