An article in MIT’s Technology Review magazine about our work on how multitasking “mixed selectivity” neurons may be key for cognition.
Do-It-All Neurons – A key to cognitive flexibility by Anne Trafton
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Miller Lab alumnus Andreas Nieder shows that dopamine (DA) has different effects on two different classes of neurons in the prefrontal cortex. For neurons with a short latency visual response, DA suppressed activity but preserved their signal to noise ratio. For neurons with a longer visual latency (exclusively broad-spiking, putative pyramidal neurons), DA increased excitability and enhanced signal/noise ratio. Thus, DA can shape how the prefrontal cortex processes bottom-up sensory inputs.
Jacob et al -
A Neuron Preview for Miller Lab graduate student Simon Kornblith’s paper on a network for scene processing:
Scene Areas in Humans and Macaques by Epstein and JulianHere’s the original post on Simon’s paper and a link to it:
A Network For Scene Processing -
Slideshow: The 6th Annual Dana and Betty Fisher Retreat of MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu-0CW5Nyl4&feature=share -
Miller Lab graduate student Simon Kornblith publishes a paper in Neuron from work in his old lab. By combining FMRI with electrode recording and stimulation, they found an area in the occipitotemporal cortex that has many scene-selective neurons, the lateral place patch (LPP). By stimulating it, they discover connections to several other cortical areas, including a medial place patch (MPP) in the parahippocampal gyrus. Elegant and important work, Simon, congratulations! Now, get back to work. ?
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Miller Lab alumnus, Andreas Nieder, finds that abstract decisions divorced from motor plans are distributed across frontal areas, even those traditionally thought of as motor areas. In fact, they are more strongly encoded in the presupplementary motor area than the prefrontal cortex.
Merten and Nieder 2013Miller Lab work cited:
Freedman, D.J., Riesenhuber, M., Poggio, T., and Miller, E.K. (2001) Categorical representation of visual stimuli in the primate prefrontal cortex. Science, 291:312-316. View PDF »Miller, E.K. and Cohen, J.D. (2001) An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 24:167-202. Designated a Current Classic by Thomson Scientific as among the most cited papers in Neuroscience and Behavior. View PDF »
Miller, E.K. (2000) The prefrontal cortex and cognitive control. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 1:59-65.
Wallis, J.D., Anderson, K.C., and Miller, E.K. (2001) Single neurons in the prefrontal cortex encode abstract rules. Nature, 411:953-956. View PDF »
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It was a good week for Miller Lab alumnus David J. Freedman (now a professor at University of Chicago).
Dave won the Distinguished Investigator Award in the Biological Sciences at The University of Chicago (http://www.freedmanlab.org/), was elected to the International Neuropsychological Symposium (INS History), and his band FuzZz had a CD release party.
When you’re hot, you’re hot.
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Miller Lab alumnus, Andreas Nieder, shows number tuned neurons in pefrontal and parietal cortices of naive (untrained) subjects.
Viswanathan and Nieder 2013Andreas Nieder’s Miller Lab work on the neural substrates for numerosity:
Nieder, A., Freedman, D.J., and Miller, E.K. (2002) Representation of the quantity of visual items in the primate prefrontal cortex. Science. 297:1708-1711. View PDF »
Nieder, A. and Miller, E.K. (2003) Coding of cognitive magnitude: Compressed scaling of numerical information in the primate prefrontal cortex. Neuron. 37:149-157. View PDF »
Nieder, A. and Miller, E.K. (2004) A parieto-frontal network for visual numerical information in the monkey. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101:7457-7462. View PDF »
Nieder, A. and Miller, E.K. (2004) Analog numerical representations in rhesus monkeys: Evidence for parallel processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 16:889-901. View PDF »
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If you are interested in cognition, brain rhythms, and, especially, brain rhythms and cognition, this is the place to be.
http://cogrhythms.bu.edu/conference.htmThe Rhythmic Dynamics and Cognition Conference is a two-day event sponsored by the Cognitive Rhythms Collaborative (CRC). The program will be held at the Brain Building (Building 46) on the MIT campus (Room 3002) and will include lectures, a reception, and a poster session.
Speakers include:
- Pascal Fries, (Ernst Strungmann Institute (ESI), Frankfurt)
- Elizabeth Buffalo (Emery University)
- Charlie Schroeder (Nathan Kline Institute)
- Peter Brown (University College London)
- Fiona Le Beau (Newcastle University)
- Earl Miller (MIT)
- Charlie Wilson (University of Texas, San Antonio)
- Peter Uhlhaas (University of Glasgow)
- Christa van Dort (Mass. General Hospital)
- Markus Siegal (University of Tubingen)
- Robert Knight (UC Berkely)
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For years, neurophysiologists have observed that many neurons in higher-level cortex have “weird” properties. They activate across a wide range of seemingly unrelated conditions and thus don’t seem to fit into the traditional view of brain function in which each neuron has a single function or message. They were often considered a “complicating nuisance” at best or dismissed at worst. It turns out that these mixed selectivity neurons may be the most critical for complex behavior and cognition. They greatly expand the brain’s computational power.
Read MIT press release: Complex brain function depends on flexibility
The paper:
Rigotti, M., Barak, O., Warden, M.R., Wang, X., Daw, N.D., Miller, E.K., & Fusi, S. (2013) The importance of mixed selectivity in complex cognitive tasks. Nature View PDF doi:10.1038/nature12160