Attention improves performance primarily by reducing interneuronal correlations.

ABSTRACT: Visual attention can improve behavioral performance by allowing observers to focus on the important information in a complex scene. Attention also typically increases the firing rates of cortical sensory neurons. Rate increases improve the signal-to-noise ratio of individual neurons, and this improvement has been assumed to underlie attention-related improvements in behavior. We recorded dozens of neurons simultaneously in visual area V4 and found that changes in single neurons accounted for only a small fraction of the improvement in the sensitivity of the population. Instead, over 80% of the attentional improvement in the population signal was caused by decreases in the correlations between the trial-to-trial fluctuations in the responses of pairs of neurons. These results suggest that t

SUBMITTER: Cohen MR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2820564 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature