Linking neural population formatting to function.

ABSTRACT: Animals capable of complex behaviors tend to have more distinct brain areas than simpler organisms, and artificial networks that perform many tasks tend to self-organize into modules (1-3). This suggests that different brain areas serve distinct functions supporting complex behavior. However, a common observation is that essentially anything that an animal senses, knows, or does can be decoded from neural activity in any brain area (4-6). If everything is everywhere, why have distinct areas? Here we show that the function of a brain area is more related to how different types of information are combined (formatted) in neural representations than merely whether that information is present. We compared two brain areas: the middle temporal area (MT), which is important for visual motion perce

SUBMITTER: Ruff DA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11722384 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature