Texture discriminability in monkey inferotemporal cortex predicts human texture perception

Shape and texture are both important properties of visual objects, but texture is relatively less understood. Here, we characterized neuronal responses to discrete textures in monkey inferotemporal (IT) cortex and asked whether they can explain classic findings in human texture perception. We focused on three classic findings on texture discrimination: 1) it can be easy or hard depending on the constituent elements; 2) it can have asymmetries, and 3) it is reduced for textures with randomly oriented elements. We recorded neuronal activity from monkey inferotemporal (IT) cortex and measured texture perception in humans for a variety of textures. Our main findings are as follows: 1) IT neurons show congruent selectivity for textures across array size; 2) textures that were easy for humans to discriminate also elicited distinct patterns of neuronal activity in monkey IT; 3) texture pairs with asymmetries in humans also exhibited asymmetric variation in firing rate across monkey IT; and 4) neuronal responses to randomly oriented textures were explained by an average of responses to homogeneous textures, which rendered them less discriminable. The reduction in discriminability of monkey IT neurons predicted the reduced discriminability in humans during texture discrimination. Taken together, our results suggest that texture perception in humans is likely based on neuronal representations similar to those in monkey IT.

Do gamma oscillations play a role in cerebral cortex?

Gamma rhythm (which has a center frequency between 30 and 80 Hz) is modulated by cognitive mechanisms such as attention and memory, and has been hypothesized to play a role in mediating these processes by supporting communication channels between cortical areas or encoding information in its phase. We highlight several issues related to gamma rhythms, such as low and inconsistent power, its dependence on low-level stimulus features, problems due to conduction delays, and contamination due to spike-related activity that makes accurate estimation of gamma phase difficult. Gamma rhythm could be a potentially useful signature of excitation-inhibition interactions in the brain, but whether it also provides a mechanism for information processing or coding remains an open question.

Coding of relative size in monkey inferotemporal cortex

We seldom mistake a closer object as being larger, even though its retinal image is bigger. One underlying mechanism could be to calculate the size of the retinal image relative to that of another nearby object. Here we set out to investigate whether single neurons in the monkey inferotemporal cortex (IT) are sensitive to the relative size of parts in a display. Each neuron was tested on shapes containing two parts that could be conjoined or spatially separated. Each shape was presented in four versions created by combining the two parts at each of two possible sizes. In this design, neurons sensitive to the absolute size of parts would show the greatest response modulation when both parts are scaled up, whereas neurons encoding relative size would show similar responses. Our main findings are that 1) IT neurons responded similarly to all four versions of a shape, but tuning tended to be more consistent between versions with proportionately scaled parts; 2) in a subpopulation of cells, we observed interactions that resulted in similar responses to proportionately scaled parts; 3) these interactions developed together with sensitivity to absolute size for objects with conjoined parts but developed slightly later for objects with spatially separate parts. Taken together, our results demonstrate for the first time that there is a subpopulation of neurons in IT that encodes the relative size of parts in a display, forming a potential neural substrate for size constancy.

Dynamics of 3D view invariance in monkey inferotemporal cortex

Rotations in depth are challenging for object vision because features can appear, disappear, be stretched or compressed. Yet we easily recognize objects across views. Are the underlying representations view invariant or dependent? This question has been intensely debated in human vision, but the neuronal representations remain poorly understood. Here, we show that for naturalistic objects, neurons in the monkey inferotemporal (IT) cortex undergo a dynamic transition in time, whereby they are initially sensitive to viewpoint and later encode view-invariant object identity. This transition depended on two aspects of object structure: it was strongest when objects foreshortened strongly across views and were similar to each other. View invariance in IT neurons was present even when objects were reduced to silhouettes, suggesting that it can arise through similarity between external contours of objects across views. Our results elucidate the viewpoint debate by showing that view invariance arises dynamically in IT neurons out of a representation that is initially view dependent.

Denoising neural data with state-space smoothing: Method and application

Neural data are inevitably contaminated by noise. When such noisy data are subjected to statistical analysis, misleading conclusions can be reached. Here we attempt to address this problem by applying a state-space smoothing method, based on the combined use of the Kalman filter theory and the Expectation–Maximization algorithm, to denoise two datasets of local field potentials recorded from monkeys performing a visuomotor task. For the first dataset, it was found that the analysis of the high gamma band (60–90 Hz) neural activity in the prefrontal cortex is highly susceptible to the effect of noise, and denoising leads to markedly improved results that were physiologically interpretable. For the second dataset, Granger causality between primary motor and primary somatosensory cortices was not consistent across two monkeys and the effect of noise was suspected. After denoising, the discrepancy between the two subjects was significantly reduced.

Cholesterol-Esterifying Enzymes in Developing Rat Brain

A cholesterol-esterifying enzyme which incorporates exogenous fatty acids into cholesterol esters in the presence of ATP and coenzyme A was demonstrated in 15-day-old rat brain. This enzyme was maximally active at pH 7.4 and distinct from the cholesterol-esterifying enzyme reported earlier (Eto and Suzuki, 1971), which has a pH optimum at 5.2 and does not require cofactors. Properties of the two enzymes have been compared. Both the enzymes showed negligible esterification with acetate and were maximally active with oleic acid. The pH 5.2 enzyme esterified desmosterol, lanosterol and cholesterol at about the same rate, while the pH 7.4 enzyme was only 50% as active ith lanosterol as it was with cholesterol and desmosterol. Phosphatidyl serine stimulated the pH 5.2 enzyme but not the pH 7.4 enzyme. Phosphatidyl choline and sodium taurocholate showed no effect on either of the enzymes. Both the enzymes were associated with particulate fractions, but the pH 7.4 enzyme was localized more in the microsomes. Purified myelin showed 2.6-fold and 1.5-fold higher specific activities of pH 5.2 and 7.4 enzymes respectively, when compared with homogenate. About 7-10% of total activity of both the enzymes was associated with purified myelin. Brain stem and spinal cord showed higher specific activity of pH 5.2 enzyme than cerebral cortex and cerebellum, while pH 7.4 enzyme specific activity was higher in cerebellum and brain stem than in cerebral cortex and spinal cord. Microsomal pH 7.4 activity showed progressive increase prior to the active period of myelination, reaching a maximum on the 15th day after birth and declined to 20% of the peak activity by 30 days. In contrast, pH 5.2 enzyme reached maximum activity about the 6th day after birth and remained at this level well into adulthood. In 15-day-old rat brain, pH 7.4 enzyme had five to six times higher specific activity than pH 5.2 enzyme, while in adults the activities were equal. The pH 7.4 enzyme showed a threefold higher specific activity than pH 5.2 enzyme in myelin from 15-day-old rats, but in adults the reverse was true. Key Words: Cholesterol esterifying enzymes-Developing rat brain-Myelination. Jagannatha H. M. and Sastry P. S. Cholesterol-esterifying enzymes in developing rat brain. J. Neurochem. 36, 1352- 1360 (1981).

Analyzing multiple spike trains with nonparametric granger causality

Simultaneous recordings of spike trains from multiple single neurons are becoming commonplace. Understanding the interaction patterns among these spike trains remains a key research area. A question of interest is the evaluation of information flow between neurons through the analysis of whether one spike train exerts causal influence on another. For continuous-valued time series data, Granger causality has proven an effective method for this purpose. However, the basis for Granger causality estimation is autoregressive data modeling, which is not directly applicable to spike trains. Various filtering options distort the properties of spike trains as point processes. Here we propose a new nonparametric approach to estimate Granger causality directly from the Fourier transforms of spike train data. We validate the method on synthetic spike trains generated by model networks of neurons with known connectivity patterns and then apply it to neurons limultaneously recorded from the thalamus and the primary somatosensory cortex of a squirrel monkey undergoing tactile stimulation.

A model for visual recognition of alphanumerics

In this paper we propose a hypothetical scheme for recognizing the alphanumerics. The scheme is based on the known physiological structure of the visual cortex and the concept of a short Lino extractor nouron (SLEN). We assumo four basic typca of such units for extracting vertical, horizontal, right and left inclined straight line segments. The patterns reconstructed from the scheme show perfect agreement with the test patterns. The model indicates that the recognition of letters T and H requires extraction of the largest number of features.

Studies on bicuculline binding sites on neuronal membrane using fluorescent antibody technique: Comparative binding of gaba and bicuculline

Highly purified fluorescent labelled anti-bicuculline antibodies were used to mark bicuculline binding sites in cerebral cortex of monkey brain. Specific binding of bicuculline could be demonstrated in the synaptosomal fraction, when bicuculline was added both Image and Image . Addition of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) to the bicucullinised membrane led to a decrease in fluorescence indicating same receptor loci and establishing GABA-bicuculline antagonism at a molecular level.