The response variability of striate cortical neurons in the behaving monkey

SummaryIn order to relate single cell performance to behavioral discrimination one needs measurements of the response variance of the units. We recorded from 183 single units of area V1 of monkeys performing an orientation discrimination task. The response variance was found to increase with increasing response strength. This relationship between response variance and response strength was well described by a power function with a power close to one. The response variance was on average 1.9 times the response strength. Despite important differences in preparation, the behaving monkey data are in good agreement with those previously obtained in paralysed and anesthetised animals.

[1]  W. J. Langford.  Statistical Methods , 1959, Nature.

[2]  L. Maffei,et al.  Effect of synchronized sleep on the response of lateral geniculate units to flashes of light. , 1965, Archives italiennes de biologie.

[3]  G. P. Moore,et al.  Neuronal spike trains and stochastic point processes. I. The single spike train. , 1967, Biophysical journal.

[4]  R. B. Freeman,et al.  Neuronal Correlates of Eye Movements in the Visual Cortex of the Cat , 1972, Science.

[5]  G. J. Tomko,et al.  Neuronal variability: non-stationary responses to identical visual stimuli. , 1974, Brain research.

[6]  B. Finlay,et al.  Short-term response variability of monkey striate neurons , 1976, Brain Research.

[7]  H Suzuki,et al.  A glass-insulated "Elgiloy" microelectrode for recording unit activity in chronic monkey experiments. , 1976, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[8]  B. Richmond,et al.  Implantation of magnetic search coils for measurement of eye position: An improved method , 1980, Vision Research.

[9]  D. Hubel,et al.  Effects of sleep and arousal on the processing of visual information in the cat , 1981, Nature.

[10]  J. Movshon,et al.  The statistical reliability of signals in single neurons in cat and monkey visual cortex , 1983, Vision Research.

[11]  Larry S. Liebovitch,et al.  Ion channel kinetics: a model based on fractal scaling rather than multistate Markov processes , 1987 .

[12]  I. Ohzawa,et al.  Visual orientation and spatial frequency discrimination: a comparison of single neurons and behavior. , 1987, Journal of neurophysiology.

[13]  Guy A. Orban,et al.  Cheapmonkey: Comparing an ANN and the Primate Brain on a Simple Perceptual Task: Orientation Discrimination , 1989, NATO Neurocomputing.

[14]  P. Heggelund,et al.  Response variability and orientation discrimination of single cells in striate cortex of cat , 1978, Experimental Brain Research.

[15]  J. A. Movshon,et al.  The dependence of response amplitude and variance of cat visual cortical neurones on stimulus contrast , 1981, Experimental Brain Research.

[16]  M. Wright,et al.  Sensitivity of neurones in visual cortex (area 17) under different levels of anaesthesia , 2004, Experimental Brain Research.

[17]  A. Dean.  The variability of discharge of simple cells in the cat striate cortex , 2004, Experimental Brain Research.

[18]  A. Vendrik,et al.  Determination of the transfer ratio of cat's geniculate neurons through quasi-intracellular recordings and the relation with the level of alertness , 2004, Experimental Brain Research.