Neuronal mechanisms of attention-dependent bahavioral performance: On the interaction of the fine temporal structure of neuronal activity, neuronal variability and latency, and reaction times

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Selective visual attention modulates the activity of single neurons in early visual cortex and leads, on a behavioural level, to enhanced performance in visual discriminability and to reduced reaction times. However, only a very few studies directly investigated whether and how the specific attention-dependent neuronal modulations observed on the level of single cells, or at the population level, relate to the experimentally observed behavioural improvements. Recently, we have shown that under the influence of attention accelerated reaction times are strongly correlated with reduced neuronal latencies. Based on this finding, it is important to investigate the specific neuronal mechanisms underlying the reduction in response latency. We hypothesize that reductions in latency are due to the interaction of increases in neuronal synchronisation and reductions in neuronal variability, thereby influencing reaction time. To investigate this issue, we plan to perform multi-electrode recordings in macaque areas V1 and MT to clarify the inter- and intraareal dynamics of attention-dependent modulations with respect to their impact on neuronal latencies. For this, we utilize an experimental paradigm allowing for both the control of spatial attention and task-related activity.