Trial-to-trial variability of the prefrontal neurons reveals the nature of their engagement in a motion discrimination task.

ABSTRACT: During motion discrimination tasks, many prefrontal cortex (PFC) neurons are strongly modulated by the behavioral context, suggesting their involvement in sensory discriminations. Recent studies suggest that trial-to-trial variability of spiking activity characteristic of cortical neurons could be a source of information about the state of neurons and their participation in behavioral tasks. We tested this hypothesis by examining the variability of putative pyramidal PFC neurons, a likely source of top-down influences. The variability of these neurons was calculated as a ratio of spike count variance to its mean (fano factor, FF), while monkeys compared the directions of two moving stimuli, sample and test, separated by a delay. We found that the FF tracked consecutive components of the ta

SUBMITTER: Hussar C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3003075 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature