Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 115, Issue 41, Pages 10499-10504Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1803854115
Keywords
perceptual learning; bottom-up saliency; top-down influence; awake monkey; primary visual cortex
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Funding
- National Key Basic Research Program of China [2014CB846101]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [31500851, 31671079, 91432102]
- Gatsby Charitable Foundation
- 111 Project [B07008]
- Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China [2017XTCX04]
- Beijing Normal University
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Early sensory cortex is better known for representing sensory inputs but less for the effect of its responses on behavior. Here we explore the behavioral correlates of neuronal responses in primary visual cortex (V1) in a task to detect a uniquely oriented bar-the orientation singleton-in a background of uniformly oriented bars. This singleton is salient or inconspicuous when the orientation contrast between the singleton and background bars is sufficiently large or small, respectively. Using implanted microelectrodes, we measured V1 activities while monkeys were trained to quickly saccade to the singleton. A neuron's responses to the singleton within its receptive field had an early and a late component, both increased with the orientation contrast. The early component started from the outset of neuronal responses; it remained unchanged before and after training on the singleton detection. The late component started similar to 40 ms after the early one; it emerged and evolved with practicing the detection task. Training increased the behavioral accuracy and speed of singleton detection and increased the amount of information in the late response component about a singleton's presence or absence. Furthermore, for a given singleton, faster detection performance was associated with higher V1 responses; training increased this behavioral-neural correlate in the early V1 responses but decreased it in the late V1 responses. Therefore, V1's early responses are directly linked with behavior and represent the bottom-up saliency signals. Learning strengthens this link, likely serving as the basis for making the detection task more reflexive and less top-down driven.
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