The Miller Lab

  • Preparatory Attention Relies on Dynamic Interactions between Prelimbic Cortex and Anterior Cingulate Cortex

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    This study shows oscillatory synchrony between different frontal lobe areas  during preparatory focusing of attention.  Interestingly, the same neurons participated in attention and motor networks, only at different frequencies.  This is further evidence that rhythmic synchrony may allow neurons to multiplex their functions.
    Totah et al Cerebral Cortex 2013

    Miller Lab work cited:
    Buschman, T.J. and Miller, E.K. (2007) Top-down versus bottom-up control of attention in the prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices. Science. 315: 1860-1862  The Scientist’s “Hot Paper” for October 2009. View PDF »

    Siegel, M., Warden, M.R., and Miller, E.K. (2009) Phase-dependent neuronal coding of objects in short-term memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106: 21341-21346. 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 »

    Rainer, G., Rao, S.C., and Miller, E.K. (1999)  Prospective coding for objects in the primate prefrontal cortex.  Journal of Neuroscience, 19:5493-5505. View PDF »

  • Gorillas Agree: Human Frontal Cortex is Nothing Special

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    The human prefrontal cortex may not be special in terms of its size relative to other primates, but it is still a pretty special.
    http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/2013/05/16/gorillas-agree-human-frontal-cortex-is-nothing-special/?utm_source=feedly

    Want to know what it does?  Here’s a start:
    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 »

  • Cerebellum and Cognition: Evidence for the Encoding of Higher Order Rules

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    This paper reports FMRI in humans performing a task requiring first-order rules (S-R associations with a specific motor output) and second order rules that govern the use of the first-order rules.  Cerebellum lobules that project to the prefrontal cortex show activation for both types of rules.  This suggests that the cerebellum contributes to rule-based behaviors even when the rules are higher-order and don’t directly involve a motor command.
    http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/6/1433.abstract

    For further reading on the role of rules in cognition and their neural implementation see:
    Miller, E.K. and Cohen, J.D. (2001) An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 24:167-202.  View PDF »

    Buschman, T.J., Denovellis, E.L., Diogo, C., Bullock, D. and Miller, E.K. (2012) Synchronous oscillatory neural ensembles for rules in the prefrontal cortex. Neuron, 76: 838-846.  View PDF

    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 »

  • El Pais: Boston, another Silicon Valley

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    Miller Lab Research Scientist Vicky Puig quoted in a article in El Pais.  The Picower Institute at MIT is called  “one of the best neuroscience centers in the world”.  One of the?

    In Spanish, but that’s why we have Google Translate.
    http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/05/01/eps/1367419412_106866.html

  • WSJ: How the Brain Really Works. (It’s not a phrenology map)

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    A nice article in the Wall Street Journal describing Jack Gallant’s recent FMRI work.  They didn’t just  subtract conditions and come up with a typical imaging map with one or a few isolated bits of activation.  Jack L. Gallant, Tolga Çukur and colleagues used sophisticated  analyses to find the relationship between the patterns of whole brain activity and the content of videos watched by the subjects.  This revealed wide networks, not isolated patches, of neurons engaged by attention to different things in the video (humans vs vehicles, etc).

    It also showed how dynamic and flexible the brain is.  When subjects looked for humans, large portions of the cortex were sensitive to humans and less sensitive to vehicles. When subjects looked for vehicles, large portions of the cortex became vehicle detectors.  Many of the same brain areas were involved in multiple networks, changing when people changed the focus of their attention.  Thus, rather than the cortex being composed of modules with strict specializations, high-level information is spread across wide-ranging cortical networks of neurons that participate in many different functions, adapting their properties to current cognitive demands.

    We have long argued that mixed selectivity, adaptive coding neurons are crucial for hallmarks of cognition like flexibility.  And in forthcoming paper (Rigotti et al), we show computationally that you can’t build a complex brain w/o them.

    For a brief discussion of this issue, read this Preview of a paper by Stokes et al:
    Miller, E.K. and Fusi, S. (2013) Limber neurons for a nimble mind. Neuron. 78:211-213. View PDF

    And stay tuned for this paper:
    Rigotti, M., Barak, O., Warden, M.R., Wang, X., Daw, N.D., Miller, E.K., & Fusi, S. (in press) The importance of mixed selectivity in complex cognitive tasks. Nature.