ワガツマ ノブヒコ   Wagatsuma Nobuhiko
  我妻 伸彦
   所属   東邦大学  理学部 情報科学科
   職種   講師
論文種別 原著
言語種別 英語
査読の有無 査読あり
表題 Analysis of spiking synchrony in visual cortex reveals distinct types of top-down modulation signals for spatial and object-based attention
掲載誌名 正式名:PLOS Computational Biology
ISSNコード:1553734X
掲載区分国外
出版社 Public Library of Science
巻・号・頁 in press(in press),pp.in press-in press
著者・共著者 Nobuhiko Wagatsuma, Brian Hu, Rüdiger von der Heydt, Ernst Niebur
担当区分 筆頭著者,責任著者
発行年月 2021/04
概要 The activity of a border ownership selective (BOS) neuron indicates where a foreground object is located relative to its (classical) receptive field (RF). A population of BOS neurons thus provides an important component of perceptual grouping, the organization of the visual scene into objects. In previous theoretical work, it has been suggested that this grouping mechanism is implemented by a population of dedicated grouping (“$G$”) cells that integrate the activity of the distributed feature cells representing an object and, by feedback, modulate the same cells, thus making them border ownership selective. The feedback modulation by $G$ cells is thought to also provide the mechanism for object-based attention. A recent modeling study showed that modulatory common feedback, implemented by synapses with N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA)-type glutamate receptors, accounts for the experimentally observed synchrony in spike trains of BOS neurons and the shape of cross-correlations between them, including its dependence on the attentional state. However, that study was limited to pairs of BOS neurons with consistent border ownership preferences, defined as two neurons tuned to respond to the same visual object, in which attention decreases synchrony. But attention has also been shown to increase synchrony in neurons with inconsistent border ownership selectivity. Here we extend the computational model from the previous study to fully understand these effects of attention. We postulate the existence of a second type of $G$-cell that represents spatial attention by modulating the activity of all BOS cells in a spatially defined area. Simulations of this model show that a combination of spatial and object-based mechanisms fully accounts for the observed pattern of synchrony between BOS neurons. Our results suggest that modulatory feedback from $G$-cells may underlie both spatial and object-based attention.
DOI 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008829