Single neurons may encode simultaneous stimuli by switching between activity patterns.
Abstract
How the brain preserves information about multiple simultaneous items is poorly understood.
We report that single neurons can represent multiple stimuli by interleaving signals
across time. We record single units in an auditory region, the inferior colliculus,
while monkeys localize 1 or 2 simultaneous sounds. During dual-sound trials, we find
that some neurons fluctuate between firing rates observed for each single sound, either
on a whole-trial or on a sub-trial timescale. These fluctuations are correlated in
pairs of neurons, can be predicted by the state of local field potentials prior to
sound onset, and, in one monkey, can predict which sound will be reported first. We
find corroborating evidence of fluctuating activity patterns in a separate dataset
involving responses of inferotemporal cortex neurons to multiple visual stimuli. Alternation
between activity patterns corresponding to each of multiple items may therefore be
a general strategy to enhance the brain processing capacity, potentially linking such
disparate phenomena as variable neural firing, neural oscillations, and limits in
attentional/memory capacity.
Type
Journal articleSubject
Auditory CortexNeurons
Animals
Macaca mulatta
Acoustic Stimulation
Stereotaxic Techniques
Electrodes, Implanted
Auditory Perception
Attention
Action Potentials
Sound
Female
Inferior Colliculi
Single-Cell Analysis
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/17888Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1038/s41467-018-05121-8Publication Info
Caruso, Valeria C; Mohl, Jeff T; Glynn, Christopher; Lee, Jungah; Willett, Shawn M;
Zaman, Azeem; ... Groh, Jennifer M (2018). Single neurons may encode simultaneous stimuli by switching between activity patterns.
Nature communications, 9(1). pp. 2715. 10.1038/s41467-018-05121-8. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/17888.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Valeria Caruso
Affiliate
Jennifer M. Groh
Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
Research in my laboratory concerns how sensory and motor systems work together, and
how neural representations play a combined role in sensorimotor and cognitive processing
(embodied cognition).
Most of our work concerns the interactions between vision and hearing. We frequently
perceive visual and auditory stimuli as being bound together if they seem likely to
have arisen from a common source. That's why we tend not to notice that the speakers
on TV sets or in movie theatres are located bes
Surya Tapas Tokdar
Associate Professor of Statistical Science
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