VISUAL PROCESSING IN CEREBRAL CORTEX

这个子项目是许多研究子项目中利用 资源由NIH/NCRR资助的中心拨款提供。子项目和 调查员(PI)可能从NIH的另一个来源获得了主要资金， 并因此可以在其他清晰的条目中表示。列出的机构是 该中心不一定是调查人员的机构。 对特定刺激的关注极大地提高了依赖于这些刺激的表现，同时降低了对其他刺激的表现。神经生理学研究表明，注意力改变了视觉大脑皮层神经元的反应，但关于注意力改变行为的神经机制仍有许多问题。拟议中的实验将解决两个具体问题，即空间注意如何影响猴子视觉皮质的视觉处理。第一个具体目标将研究注意力如何影响视觉皮质中单个神经元的反应。许多研究表明，关注刺激会增强代表该刺激的神经元的反应，但很少有人研究这种增强的形式。最近的结果表明，注意力改变了一些神经元的这种联系，但对于那些最适合当前任务的神经元来说，在注意力状态下，神经元和行为表现之间存在密切关系的可能性仍然存在。第二个具体目标将通过研究注意力如何影响神经元在不同视觉任务执行过程中的神经元和行为表现之间的关系来测试这种可能性。这些实验的结果将极大地扩展我们对注意如何改变大脑皮层视觉表征和改善行为表现的理解，并将为单个神经元如何影响视觉行为提供新的见解。

This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Attention to particular stimuli greatly improves performance that depends on those stimuli, while degrading performance on other stimuli. Neurophysiological studies have shown that attention changes the responses of neurons in visual cerebral cortex, but many questions remain about the neuronal mechanisms through which attention alters behavior. The proposed experiments will address two specific questions about how spatial attention affects visual processing in the visual cortex of monkeys. The first specific aim will examine how attention affects the responses of individual neurons in visual cortex. Many studies have shown that attending to a stimulus enhances the responses of neurons that represent that stimulus, but few have examined the form of this enhancement. Recent results show that attention alters this link for some neurons, but leave open the possibility that a close relationship between neuronal and behavioral performance persists across attentional states for those neurons that are best suited for current task. The second specific aim will test this possibility by examining how attention affects the relationship between neuronal and behavioral performance for neurons during the performance of different visual tasks. The results from these experiments will greatly extend our understanding of how attention changes visual representations in cerebral cortex and improves behavioral performance, and will provide new insight about how individual neurons contribute to visual behaviors.