RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Perception and propagation of activity through the cortical hierarchy is determined by neural variability
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.12.28.474343
DO 10.1101/2021.12.28.474343
A1 Rowland, James M.
A1 van der Plas, Thijs L.
A1 Loidolt, Matthias
A1 Lees, Robert M.
A1 Keeling, Joshua
A1 Dehning, Jonas
A1 Akam, Thomas
A1 Priesemann, Viola
A1 Packer, Adam M.
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/12/30/2021.12.28.474343.abstract
AB The brains of higher organisms are composed of anatomically and functionally distinct regions performing specialised tasks; but regions do not operate in isolation. Orchestration of complex behaviours requires communication between brain regions, but how neural activity dynamics are organised to facilitate reliable transmission is not well understood. We studied this process directly by generating neural activity that propagates between brain regions and drives behaviour, allowing us to assess how populations of neurons in sensory cortex cooperate to transmit information. We achieved this by imaging two hierarchically organised and densely interconnected regions, the primary and secondary somatosensory cortex (S1 and S2) in mice while performing two-photon photostimulation of S1 neurons and assigning behavioural salience to the photostimulation. We found that the probability of perception is determined not only by the strength of the photostimulation signal, but also by the variability of S1 neural activity. Therefore, maximising the signal-to-noise ratio of the stimulus representation in cortex is critical to its continued propagation downstream. Further, we show that propagated, behaviourally salient activity elicits balanced, persistent, and generalised activation of the downstream region. Hence, our work adds to existing understanding of cortical function by identifying how population activity is formatted to ensure robust transmission of information, allowing specialised brain regions to communicate and coordinate behaviour.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.