Cortical encoding of unconscious visual information and its impact on behavior

无意识视觉信息的皮质编码及其对行为的影响

基本信息

批准号：
10653902
负责人：
VALENTIN DRAGOI
金额：
$ 38.35万
依托单位：
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS HLTH SCI CTR HOUSTON
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
财政年份：
2020
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2020-09-30 至 2025-06-30
项目状态：
未结题

来源：
https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10653902
关键词：
Age related macular degeneration Amblyopia Animals Area Attention Awareness Behavior Behavioral Brain Cells Code Complex Conscious Diabetic Retinopathy Discrimination Electrodes Exhibits Exposure to Goals Human Image Individual Learning Life Link Macaca Masks Neurons Perception Performance Persons Population Property Research Resolution Sensory Stimulus Stroke Subliminal Stimulation Techniques Testing Time Unconscious State V1 neuron V4 neuron Vision Visual Cortex Visual Perception Visual impairment area V1 area V4 brain based calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II effective therapy experience experimental study improved millisecond neural neuronal circuitry nonhuman primate novel optogenetics promoter receptive field response sensory cortex spatiotemporal stimulus processing transmission process visual information visual stimulus

项目摘要

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Stimuli presented too briefly to be noticed can nonetheless facilitate the perceptual processing of the same stimuli many minutes later. Whereas the phenomenon of subliminal priming has been known for decades, whether and how sensory information is encoded in the brain in the absence of awareness in a way that influences subsequent sensory processing across neuronal circuits remains a mystery. We will answer these questions for the first time by examining, at single cell resolution, whether exposure to subliminal stimuli influences perceptual performance and the coding of information across visual cortical populations. To accomplish this goal, we will use multiple-electrode recording of single-unit activity in macaque early and mid- level visual cortical areas (V1 and V4) and behavioral techniques to examine the dynamics and coding in neuronal populations during and after subliminal exposure, and their impact on perceptual performance. Aim 1 will investigate whether exposure to subliminal stimuli increases subsequent perceptual performance and the amount of information encoded in population activity. Our hypothesis is that subliminal exposure improves perceptual discrimination performance when stimuli are subsequently presented above the detectability threshold, and increases the amount of information extracted from the population response. Aim 2 will examine the mechanism of the improvement in neuronal and behavioral performance after subliminal exposure. We will first focus on causal experiments involving optogenetic inactivation which will test whether suppressing neuronal activity in visual cortex during the presentation of subliminal stimuli reduces the strength of subliminal priming. Cross-correlation analysis will subsequently test whether improved network and perceptual performance after subliminal exposure is consistent with a Hebbian mechanism underlying the increase in functional connectivity specifically for the neurons activated by subthreshold stimuli. Aim 3 will examine the impact of attention on the relationship between subliminal priming and neuronal and perceptual performance. We will test the novel hypothesis that spatial attention reduces the efficacy of subliminal priming – exposure to unattended subliminal stimulation will be associated with a larger improvement in network coding and perceptual performance compared to exposure to attended information. In contrast, we expect that attention will increase the strength of supraliminal priming, i.e., exposure to attended subliminal stimulation will be associated with a larger improvement in network coding and perceptual performance compared to exposure to unattended information. Taken together, our proposed experiments can potentially advance our understanding of information coding in visual cortex by testing the limits of sensory experience and its relationship with perception, which will help develop effective therapies to treat the brain-based aspects of low vision conditions, such as amblyopia, age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, or stroke.

项目摘要/摘要刺激太短暂而被注意到，尽管如此刺激几分钟后。尽管潜意识启动的现象已经闻名了数十年，但是否在没有意识的情况下以某种方式将感官信息在大脑中编码影响随后跨神经元电路的感觉处理仍然是一个谜。我们将回答这些首次通过在单细胞分辨率下检查潜意识刺激的问题影响感知性能和跨视觉皮质种群的信息编码。到实现这一目标，我们将使用猕猴早期和中间的单单元活动的多电极记录水平视觉皮质区域（V1和V4）和行为技术，以检查动态和编码潜意识暴露期间和之后的神经元种群及其对感知性能的影响。目标1 将调查暴露于海皮刺激是否会增加随后的感知表现和人口活动中编码的信息量。我们的假设是潜意识的暴露有所改善随后将刺激呈现在检测性上方时，感知歧视性能阈值，并增加从人口响应中提取的信息量。 AIM 2将检查潜意识暴露后神经元和行为表现改善的机制。我们将首先关注涉及光遗传学失活的因果实验，这将测试是否抑制在潜意识刺激介绍期间，视觉皮层中的神经元活性降低了潜意识的强度启动。互相关分析将随后测试是否改善网络和感知潜意识暴露后的性能与增加的Hebbian机制一致专门针对亚阈值刺激激活的神经元的功能连通性。 AIM 3将检查关注对海皮启动与神经元和感知性能之间关系的影响。我们将测试新的假设，即空间注意力降低了潜意识启动的效率 - 暴露于无人看管的潜意识刺激将与网络编码和与接触到的信息相比，感知性能。相比之下，我们期望关注会增加上源启动的强度，即暴露于参加的潜意识刺激将是与暴露相比，与网络编码和感知性能的更大改进相关无人看管的信息。综上所述，我们提出的实验可以潜在地提高我们的理解通过测试感官体验的限制及其与之的关系，在视觉皮层中编码的信息编码感知将有助于开发有效的疗法来治疗低视力条件的基于大脑的方面，例如弱视，与年龄相关的黄斑变性，糖尿病性视网膜病变或中风。