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A Sparse Probabilistic Code Underlies the Limits of Behavioral Discrimination
The cortical code that underlies perception must enable subjects to perceive the world at time scales relevant for behavior. We find that mice can integrate visual stimuli very quickly (<100 ms) to reach plateau performance in an orientation discrimination task. To define features of cortical act...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Oxford University Press
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7132908/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31403676 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhz147 |
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author | Sriram, Balaji Li, Lillian Cruz-Martín, Alberto Ghosh, Anirvan |
author_facet | Sriram, Balaji Li, Lillian Cruz-Martín, Alberto Ghosh, Anirvan |
author_sort | Sriram, Balaji |
collection | PubMed |
description | The cortical code that underlies perception must enable subjects to perceive the world at time scales relevant for behavior. We find that mice can integrate visual stimuli very quickly (<100 ms) to reach plateau performance in an orientation discrimination task. To define features of cortical activity that underlie performance at these time scales, we measured single-unit responses in the mouse visual cortex at time scales relevant to this task. In contrast to high-contrast stimuli of longer duration, which elicit reliable activity in individual neurons, stimuli at the threshold of perception elicit extremely sparse and unreliable responses in the primary visual cortex such that the activity of individual neurons does not reliably report orientation. Integrating information across neurons, however, quickly improves performance. Using a linear decoding model, we estimate that integrating information over 50–100 neurons is sufficient to account for behavioral performance. Thus, at the limits of visual perception, the visual system integrates information encoded in the probabilistic firing of unreliable single units to generate reliable behavior. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7132908 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Oxford University Press |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-71329082020-04-09 A Sparse Probabilistic Code Underlies the Limits of Behavioral Discrimination Sriram, Balaji Li, Lillian Cruz-Martín, Alberto Ghosh, Anirvan Cereb Cortex Original Article The cortical code that underlies perception must enable subjects to perceive the world at time scales relevant for behavior. We find that mice can integrate visual stimuli very quickly (<100 ms) to reach plateau performance in an orientation discrimination task. To define features of cortical activity that underlie performance at these time scales, we measured single-unit responses in the mouse visual cortex at time scales relevant to this task. In contrast to high-contrast stimuli of longer duration, which elicit reliable activity in individual neurons, stimuli at the threshold of perception elicit extremely sparse and unreliable responses in the primary visual cortex such that the activity of individual neurons does not reliably report orientation. Integrating information across neurons, however, quickly improves performance. Using a linear decoding model, we estimate that integrating information over 50–100 neurons is sufficient to account for behavioral performance. Thus, at the limits of visual perception, the visual system integrates information encoded in the probabilistic firing of unreliable single units to generate reliable behavior. Oxford University Press 2020-03 2019-08-12 /pmc/articles/PMC7132908/ /pubmed/31403676 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhz147 Text en © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Original Article Sriram, Balaji Li, Lillian Cruz-Martín, Alberto Ghosh, Anirvan A Sparse Probabilistic Code Underlies the Limits of Behavioral Discrimination |
title | A Sparse Probabilistic Code Underlies the Limits of Behavioral Discrimination |
title_full | A Sparse Probabilistic Code Underlies the Limits of Behavioral Discrimination |
title_fullStr | A Sparse Probabilistic Code Underlies the Limits of Behavioral Discrimination |
title_full_unstemmed | A Sparse Probabilistic Code Underlies the Limits of Behavioral Discrimination |
title_short | A Sparse Probabilistic Code Underlies the Limits of Behavioral Discrimination |
title_sort | sparse probabilistic code underlies the limits of behavioral discrimination |
topic | Original Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7132908/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31403676 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhz147 |
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