Optogenetically induced low-frequency correlations impair perception.

ABSTRACT: Deployment of covert attention to a spatial location can cause large decreases in low-frequency correlated variability among neurons in macaque area V4 whose receptive-fields lie at the attended location. It has been estimated that this reduction accounts for a substantial fraction of the attention-mediated improvement in sensory processing. These estimates depend on assumptions about how population signals are decoded and the conclusion that correlated variability impairs perception, is purely hypothetical. Here we test this proposal directly by optogenetically inducing low-frequency fluctuations, to see if this interferes with performance in an attention-demanding task. We find that low-frequency optical stimulation of neurons in V4 elevates correlations among pairs of neurons and impair

SUBMITTER: Nandy A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6391072 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature