PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Supriya Ghosh
AU  - John H. R. Maunsell
TI  - Visual area V4 encodes history dependent attentional effort and single-trial perceptual detection
AID  - 10.1101/584409
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 584409
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/03/21/584409.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/03/21/584409.full
AB  - Intense attentional effort improves performance. Neurons in visual area V4 exhibit changes in spike rates that are correlated with effort, selective attention and absolute reward expectation. How neuronal spikes in V4 encode attentional states and perceptual performance with reference to other task relevant motivational and decision signals is poorly understood. We recorded neuronal spikes from monkey visual area V4, and isolated attentional effort from reward expectancy and motor decisions in a visual orientation detection task using a statistical approach based on generalized linear models. We found that V4 spike responses exhibit hysteresis with reward changes. Single trial spiking activity encodes a combination of temporally overlapping sensory and cognitive signals. Neuronal spikes integrate contextual history of attentional effort on a longer time scale, and task related perceptual detection in a shorter timescale within a single trial. Notably, immediate reward expectation and behavioral choice probability are poor predictors of V4 spikes throughout the trial. Further, detection of task relevant perceptual signal is decoded from single trial population spikes with high accuracy. These results provide a detailed representation of perceptual and cognitive signals in V4 that are crucial for performance.