Neural Correlates of visual perception and behaviour: Analysis of multiple single-neuron recordings in humans

患有严重癫痫的患者，如果用药后病情没有改善，可以考虑进行手术干预，以移除癫痫的起始区。根据临床标准，这些患者可以植入颅内电极，以准确定位癫痫发作的部位，并评估手术的潜在结果。最近，伦敦S国王学院建立了一种在欧洲独一无二的装置，这种装置不仅可以记录脑电，还可以记录多个单神经元。根据这些神经元的活动，我们计划研究是否有可能预测癫痫发作的发生。这具有很大的临床潜力，可以开发癫痫警报装置或闭合循环系统，以防止即将发生的癫痫发作(例如，使用速效药物或微刺激)。以前在这方面的研究一直没有定论，因为他们使用的是脑电记录，由于其较低的空间分辨率和较高的复杂性，其固有的主要局限性。这将是第一次使用单细胞活动进行此类研究。除了临床重要性，伦敦S国王学院的记录装置提供了一个独特的机会，可以直接记录清醒和行为正常的人类受试者的单个神经元的活动，这些受试者可以报告并提供他们在不同任务和大脑状态下的感知和行为的细节。使用简单的实验范式，我们计划解决神经科学中最吸引人和最令人困惑的问题之一：大脑中的神经元如何代表有意识的视觉感知？为此，我们将研究受试者看到不同图片时神经元的活动。然后，我们将评估神经元是否会对特定的图片做出反应，以及如果图片被识别或不被识别，这些反应是否会发生变化。

Patients suffering from severe epilepsy that do not improve with medication may be considered for a surgical intervention to remove the seizure originating area. Based on clinical criteria, these patients may be implanted with intracranial electrodes to accurately localize the focus of the seizures and evaluate the potential outcome of the surgery. Since recently, a setup unique in Europe is in place at King?s College London that from the intracranial electrodes allows not only the recording of EEG but also of multiple single-neurons. From the activity of these neurons, we plan to study whether it is possible to predict the onset of epileptic seizures. This has large clinical potential to develop seizure-warning devices or closed loop systems that can preclude the onset of the impending seizures (e.g. using a fast-acting drug or microstimulation). Previous studies at this respect have been inconclusive because they used EEG recordings, which have inherent major limitations due to their poor spatial resolution and high complexity. This will be the first time that such study is done using the activity of single cells.Besides its clinical importance, the recording setup at King?s College London allows the unique opportunity to record directly the activity of single neurons in awake and behaving human subjects, who can report and give details of their perception and behaviour in different tasks and brain states. Using simple experimental paradigms, we plan to address one of the most fascinating and puzzling questions in neuroscience: how do neurons in the brain represent conscious visual perception? For this, we will study the activity of neurons while the subjects see different pictures. Then we will evaluate whether the neurons increase their firing in response to particular pictures and whether these responses change if the pictures are recognized or not.