Neural Mechanisms For Attention And Memory In The Extrastriate Cortex

知觉、注意力和记忆力的障碍常常伴随着主要的精神疾病。为了理解这些心理过程的神经机制，我们记录了猴子的纹外和前额皮质中神经元的活动，这些猴子从事的任务需要刺激辨别、注意力和记忆。 当面对多种刺激时，纹外皮层的细胞似乎参与了竞争性的相互作用，自上而下的信号使这些相互作用偏向于代表与手头任务相关的刺激的细胞。 这种偏置似乎部分地通过携带相关信息的细胞的高频（伽马）同步来实现。 一些自上而下的信号来源似乎位于前额叶和后顶叶皮层。

Disorders of perception, attention, and memory frequently accompany the major mental diseases. To understand the neural mechanisms of these mental processes, we are recording the activity of neurons in the extrastriate and prefrontal cortex of monkeys engaged in tasks requiring stimulus discrimination, attention, and memory. When confronted by multiple stimuli, cells in extrastriate cortex appear to engage in competitive interactions, and top-down signals bias these interactions in favor of cells representing the stimulus that is relevant to the task at hand. This bias appears to be accomplished, in part, through high-frequency (gamma) synchronization of the cells carrying the relevant information. Some of the sources of the top-down signals appear to be located in prefrontal and posterior parietal cortex.