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A neural surveyor in somatosensory cortex

Luke E. Miller, Cécile Fabio, Rob van Beers, Alessandro Farnè, W. Pieter Medendorp
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.26.173419
Luke E. Miller
1Radboud University, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour; Nijmegen, The Netherlands
2Integrative Multisensory Perception Action & Cognition Team – ImpAct, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, INSERM U1028, CNRS U5292; Bron, France
3University of Lyon 1; Villeurbanne, France
4Hospices Civils de Lyon, Neuro-immersion; Bron, France
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  • For correspondence: L.Miller@donders.ru.nl
Cécile Fabio
2Integrative Multisensory Perception Action & Cognition Team – ImpAct, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, INSERM U1028, CNRS U5292; Bron, France
3University of Lyon 1; Villeurbanne, France
4Hospices Civils de Lyon, Neuro-immersion; Bron, France
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Rob van Beers
1Radboud University, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour; Nijmegen, The Netherlands
6Department of Human Movement Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Alessandro Farnè
2Integrative Multisensory Perception Action & Cognition Team – ImpAct, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, INSERM U1028, CNRS U5292; Bron, France
3University of Lyon 1; Villeurbanne, France
4Hospices Civils de Lyon, Neuro-immersion; Bron, France
5Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento; Rovereto, Italy
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W. Pieter Medendorp
1Radboud University, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour; Nijmegen, The Netherlands
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Summary

Perhaps the most recognizable sensory map in all of neuroscience is the somatosensory homunculus. Though it seems straightforward, this simple representation belies the complex link between an activation in somatosensory Area 3b and the associated touch location on the body. Any isolated activation is spatially ambiguous without a neural decoder that can read its position within the entire map, though how this is computed by neural networks is unknown. We propose that somatosensory cortex implements multilateration, a common computation used by surveying and GPS systems to localize objects. Specifically, to decode touch location on the body, the somatosensory system estimates the relative distance between the afferent input and the body’s joints. We show that a simple feedforward neural network which captures the receptive field properties of somatosensory cortex implements a Bayes-optimal multilateral decoder via a combination of bell-shaped (Area 3b) and sigmoidal (Areas 1/2) tuning curves. Simulations demonstrated that this decoder produced a unique pattern of localization variability between two joints that was not produced by other known neural decoders. Finally, we identify this neural signature of multilateration in actual psychophysical experiments, suggesting that it is a candidate computational mechanism underlying tactile localization.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.
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Posted June 27, 2020.
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A neural surveyor in somatosensory cortex
Luke E. Miller, Cécile Fabio, Rob van Beers, Alessandro Farnè, W. Pieter Medendorp
bioRxiv 2020.06.26.173419; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.26.173419
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A neural surveyor in somatosensory cortex
Luke E. Miller, Cécile Fabio, Rob van Beers, Alessandro Farnè, W. Pieter Medendorp
bioRxiv 2020.06.26.173419; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.26.173419

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