Article 2019

Responses of neurons in lateral intraparietal area depend on stimulus-associated reward during binocular flash suppression

{Discovering neural correlates of subjective perception and dissociating them from sensory input has fascinated neuroscientists for a long time. Bistable and multistable perception phenomena have exhibited great experimental potential to address this question. Here, we performed electrophysiological recordings from single neurons in lateral intraparietal area (LIP) of rhesus macaques during stimulus and perceptual transitions induced by binocular flash suppression (BFS). LIP neurons demonstrated transient bursts of activity after stimulus presentation and stimulus or perceptual switches but only a minority of cells demonstrated stimulus and perceptual selectivity. To enhance LIP neural selectivity, we performed a second experiment in which the competing stimuli were associated with asymmetric rewards. We found that transient and sustained activities substantially increased while the proportion of stimulus selective neurons remained approximately the same, albeit with increased selectivity magnitude. In addition, we observed mild increases in the proportion of perceptually selective neurons which also showed increase magnitude of selectivity. Importantly, the increased selectivity of cells after the reward manipulation was not directly reflecting the reward size per se but an enhancement in stimulus differentiation. Based on our results, we conjecture that LIP contributes to perceptual transitions and serves a modulatory role in perceptual selection taking into account the stimulus behavioral value.}

Author(s): Bahmani, H and Li, Q and Logothetis, NK and Keliris, GA
Journal: {Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience}
Volume: 13
Pages: 1--12
Year: 2019
Publisher: Frontiers Research Foundation
Bibtex Type: Article (article)
DOI: 10.3389/fnsys.2019.00009
Address: Lausanne, Switzerland
Electronic Archiving: grant_archive

BibTex

@article{item_3031460,
  title = {{Responses of neurons in lateral intraparietal area depend on stimulus-associated reward during binocular flash suppression}},
  journal = {{Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience}},
  abstract = {{Discovering neural correlates of subjective perception and dissociating them from sensory input has fascinated neuroscientists for a long time. Bistable and multistable perception phenomena have exhibited great experimental potential to address this question. Here, we performed electrophysiological recordings from single neurons in lateral intraparietal area (LIP) of rhesus macaques during stimulus and perceptual transitions induced by binocular flash suppression (BFS). LIP neurons demonstrated transient bursts of activity after stimulus presentation and stimulus or perceptual switches but only a minority of cells demonstrated stimulus and perceptual selectivity. To enhance LIP neural selectivity, we performed a second experiment in which the competing stimuli were associated with asymmetric rewards. We found that transient and sustained activities substantially increased while the proportion of stimulus selective neurons remained approximately the same, albeit with increased selectivity magnitude. In addition, we observed mild increases in the proportion of perceptually selective neurons which also showed increase magnitude of selectivity. Importantly, the increased selectivity of cells after the reward manipulation was not directly reflecting the reward size per se but an enhancement in stimulus differentiation. Based on our results, we conjecture that LIP contributes to perceptual transitions and serves a modulatory role in perceptual selection taking into account the stimulus behavioral value.}},
  volume = {13},
  pages = {1--12},
  publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation},
  address = {Lausanne, Switzerland},
  year = {2019},
  slug = {item_3031460},
  author = {Bahmani, H and Li, Q and Logothetis, NK and Keliris, GA}
}