fMRI and neuronal activity in awake behaving macaques

描述(由申请人提供)： 最近，基于功能磁共振成像(FMRI)和相关技术的关于人脑的知识有了巨大的增长。不幸的是，功能磁共振成像并不直接测量神经活动；它只测量邻近血管对感兴趣的神经活动的反应。如果没有额外的信息，就很难解释神经元本身的局部电活动。拟议的实验旨在通过直接比较清醒行为的猕猴的神经活动和功能磁共振结果来填补这一知识空白。我们计划在视觉皮质的高级区域实现三个特定的目标，作为一种自下而上的方法，以了解不同信息处理复杂性水平上的fMRI-神经反应关系。首先，在初级视觉皮质(V1区)，我们将重新测试先前关于清醒行为猕猴神经-功能磁共振关系的预测，并比较视网膜(视野)坐标下电和功能磁共振活动的程度。其次，我们将测试MT的神经-fMRI关系，MT是专门处理视觉运动的视觉区域，使用运动适应来揭示方向选择反应。最后，我们将在视觉皮质的高阶区域测试神经-功能磁共振关系，该区域似乎专门用于处理人脸和其他视觉对象。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Recently there has been an enormous increase in knowledge about the human brain, based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and related techniques. Unfortunately, fMRI does not measure neural activity directly; it only measures the response of adjacent blood vessels to the neural activity of interest. Without additional information it is difficult to interpret the local electrical activity of the neurons themselves. The proposed experiments are designed to fill this knowledge gap by directly comparing neural activity to the fMRI results, in awake behaving macaque monkeys. We plan three specific aims, in progressively higher-order regions of visual cortex, as a 'bottom-up' approach to understanding the fMRI-neural response relationship at different levels of information processing complexity. First, in primary visual cortex (area V1), we will re-test previous predictions about the neural-fMRI relationship in awake behaving macaques, and compare the extent of electrical and fMRI activity in retinotopic (visual field) coordinates. Secondly we will test the neural-fMRI relationship in MT, a visual area specialized for processing visual motion, using motion adaptation to reveal direction-selective responses. Finally, we will test the neural-fMRI relationship in a higher-order region of visual cortex which appears to be specialized for processing faces and other visual objects.