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New insights on single-neuron selectivity in the era of population-level approaches

In the past, neuroscience was focused on individual neurons seen as the functional units of the nervous system, but this approach fell short over time to account for new experimental evidence, especially for what concerns associative and motor cortices. For this reason and thanks to great technologi...

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Autores principales: Vaccari, Francesco Edoardo, Diomedi, Stefano, Filippini, Matteo, Hadjidimitrakis, Kostas, Fattori, Patrizia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9554653/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36249900
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnint.2022.929052
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author Vaccari, Francesco Edoardo
Diomedi, Stefano
Filippini, Matteo
Hadjidimitrakis, Kostas
Fattori, Patrizia
author_facet Vaccari, Francesco Edoardo
Diomedi, Stefano
Filippini, Matteo
Hadjidimitrakis, Kostas
Fattori, Patrizia
author_sort Vaccari, Francesco Edoardo
collection PubMed
description In the past, neuroscience was focused on individual neurons seen as the functional units of the nervous system, but this approach fell short over time to account for new experimental evidence, especially for what concerns associative and motor cortices. For this reason and thanks to great technological advances, a part of modern research has shifted the focus from the responses of single neurons to the activity of neural ensembles, now considered the real functional units of the system. However, on a microscale, individual neurons remain the computational components of these networks, thus the study of population dynamics cannot prescind from studying also individual neurons which represent their natural substrate. In this new framework, ideas such as the capability of single cells to encode a specific stimulus (neural selectivity) may become obsolete and need to be profoundly revised. One step in this direction was made by introducing the concept of “mixed selectivity,” the capacity of single cells to integrate multiple variables in a flexible way, allowing individual neurons to participate in different networks. In this review, we outline the most important features of mixed selectivity and we also present recent works demonstrating its presence in the associative areas of the posterior parietal cortex. Finally, in discussing these findings, we present some open questions that could be addressed by future studies.
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spelling pubmed-95546532022-10-13 New insights on single-neuron selectivity in the era of population-level approaches Vaccari, Francesco Edoardo Diomedi, Stefano Filippini, Matteo Hadjidimitrakis, Kostas Fattori, Patrizia Front Integr Neurosci Neuroscience In the past, neuroscience was focused on individual neurons seen as the functional units of the nervous system, but this approach fell short over time to account for new experimental evidence, especially for what concerns associative and motor cortices. For this reason and thanks to great technological advances, a part of modern research has shifted the focus from the responses of single neurons to the activity of neural ensembles, now considered the real functional units of the system. However, on a microscale, individual neurons remain the computational components of these networks, thus the study of population dynamics cannot prescind from studying also individual neurons which represent their natural substrate. In this new framework, ideas such as the capability of single cells to encode a specific stimulus (neural selectivity) may become obsolete and need to be profoundly revised. One step in this direction was made by introducing the concept of “mixed selectivity,” the capacity of single cells to integrate multiple variables in a flexible way, allowing individual neurons to participate in different networks. In this review, we outline the most important features of mixed selectivity and we also present recent works demonstrating its presence in the associative areas of the posterior parietal cortex. Finally, in discussing these findings, we present some open questions that could be addressed by future studies. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-09-28 /pmc/articles/PMC9554653/ /pubmed/36249900 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnint.2022.929052 Text en Copyright © 2022 Vaccari, Diomedi, Filippini, Hadjidimitrakis and Fattori. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Vaccari, Francesco Edoardo
Diomedi, Stefano
Filippini, Matteo
Hadjidimitrakis, Kostas
Fattori, Patrizia
New insights on single-neuron selectivity in the era of population-level approaches
title New insights on single-neuron selectivity in the era of population-level approaches
title_full New insights on single-neuron selectivity in the era of population-level approaches
title_fullStr New insights on single-neuron selectivity in the era of population-level approaches
title_full_unstemmed New insights on single-neuron selectivity in the era of population-level approaches
title_short New insights on single-neuron selectivity in the era of population-level approaches
title_sort new insights on single-neuron selectivity in the era of population-level approaches
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9554653/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36249900
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnint.2022.929052
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