Direct Two-Dimensional Access to the Spatial Location of Covert Attention in Macaque Prefrontal Cortex
Direct Two-Dimensional Access to the Spatial Location of Covert Attention in Macaque Prefrontal Cortex
复制标题
DOI：
10.1016/j.cub.2016.04.054
复制
发表时间：
2016-07-11
期刊：
影响因子：
9.2
通讯作者：
Ben Hamed, Suliann
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Astrand, Elaine;Wardak, Claire;Ben Hamed, Suliann
直接获取运动皮质信息现在使四肢瘫痪患者能够精确地控制神经假体并恢复一些自主性。相比之下，对高级皮层认知功能（如隐蔽注意）的外显通路一直缺失。事实上，这种认知信息，只有被试知道，只能由观察者从被试的公开行为中推断出来。在这里，我们提供了直接的二维实时访问猴子暗中关注的地方，使用机器学习解码方法应用于它们正在进行的前额叶皮层活动。解码注意对提示目标探测任务中的显性行为具有高度预测性。事实上，当被解码的注意力和刺激点之间的距离减小时，猴子检测到视觉刺激的可能性就会更高。无论视觉刺激出现在被提示的目标位置还是出现在另一个干扰物位置，都是如此。在错误的实验中，动物没有察觉到目标刺激的线索，注意力和视觉线索的位置都被错误编码了。这种错误编码与前额皮质群体的一种特定状态相吻合，在这种状态下，不同神经元之间的共同可变性（或噪音相关性）很高，甚至在试验开始之前。这一观察结果有力地表明，高噪声相关状态和注意力失败之间存在功能上的联系。总的来说，这种对注意力焦点的实时获取，以及对注意力缺失的神经特征的识别，为研究注意力的神经基础以及利用神经反馈来修复或增强注意力功能开辟了新的视角。
Direct access to motor cortical information now enables tetraplegic patients to precisely control neuroprostheses and recover some autonomy. In contrast, explicit access to higher cortical cognitive functions, such as covert attention, has been missing. Indeed, this cognitive information, known only to the subject, can solely be inferred by an observer from the subject's overt behavior. Here, we present direct two-dimensional real-time access to where monkeys are covertly paying attention, using machine-learning decoding methods applied to their ongoing prefrontal cortical activity. Decoded attention was highly predictive of overt behavior in a cued target-detection task. Indeed, monkeys had a higher probability of detecting a visual stimulus as the distance between decoded attention and stimulus location decreased. This was true whether the visual stimulus was presented at the cued target location or at another distractor location. In error trials, in which the animals failed to detect the cued target stimulus, both the locations of attention and visual cue were misencoded. This misencoding coincided with a specific state of the prefrontal cortical population in which the shared variability between its different neurons (or noise correlations) was high, even before trial onset. This observation strongly suggests a functional link between high noise-correlation states and attentional failure. Overall, this real-time access to the attentional spotlight, as well as the identification of a neural signature of attentional lapses, open new perspectives both to the study of the neural bases of attention and to the remediation or enhancement of the attentional function using neurofeedback.