Encoding of stimuli in the primate dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is improved by noise correlations T Backen1, S Treue2, J C Martinez-Trujillo1 |
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1Department of Physiology, McGill University, QC, Canada |
| The primate dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) plays an important role in visual attention. How neurons interact with one another during the allocation of attention remains unclear. We recorded neuronal activity in the left dlPFC of a macaque using a 96-electrode microarray while the animal identified the target stimulus based on a color cue, allocated attention to it, and indicated a change in one of its features while ignoring similar changes in a distractor. We investigated interactions between 607 neurons during the cue presentation and sustaining of attention. One third of the neurons (168) fired more strongly when the attended stimulus was at a particular location (ipsi- vs. contralateral). Noise correlations (Cnoise) amongst neuronal pairs were significantly different from chance during the analyzed periods. We used a support vector machine to assess whether Cnoise had an impact on the neuronal population ability to encode the attended location. Compared to simultaneously recorded trials, shuffling trials across neurons significantly decreased decoding performance (70% to 49% and 89% to 83% during cue presentation and sustained attention, respectively). These results demonstrate that removing interactions between dlPFC neurons reduces the amount of information carried by neuronal populations within this area about the locus of attention. |
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