Neural mechanism for temporal discrimination of visual and auditory sensory stimuli

为了研究间隔时间的神经元机制，特别是对不同形式的感觉刺激的时间辨别，我们记录了在视觉和听觉刺激下进行时间辨别任务的动物前额叶皮层的神经元活动。在刺激呈现阶段，许多前额叶神经元选择性地对视觉和听觉刺激作出反应，而在辨别决策阶段，一组神经元代表视觉和听觉刺激的相对持续时间。这些结果表明，视觉和听觉刺激的时间信息在前额叶皮层的不同神经网络中被部分处理。

To investigate neuronal mechanism for interval timing, especially for temporal discrimination of sensory stimuli with different modality, we recorded neuronal activity from prefrontal cortex of animals performing a temporal discrimination task using visual and auditory stimuli. Many prefrontal neurons selectively responded to visual and auditory stimuli during stimulus presentation periods while a group of neurons represented relative duration for visual and auditory stimuli in a discrimination decision phase. These results suggest temporal information of visual and auditory stimuli is processed partially in different neuronal networks in prefrontal cortex.