The Miller Lab welcomes new Lab Manager, Meredith Mahnke. Glad to have you aboard.
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Neurons in the prefrontal cortex keeps track of elapsed time (even though time was not explicitly relevant) via sequential firing of neurons. The overlap of sequences depended on the degree of similarity of the item being held in memory. The time-keeping showed a Weber-fraction-like decrease in precision as time passed.
Compressed timeline of recent experience in monkey lPFC
Zoran Tiganj, Jason A Cromer, Jefferson E Roy, Earl K Miller, Marc W Howard
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/126219 -
New result on bioRxiv:
Gamma and beta bursts during working memory read-out suggest roles in its volitional control
Mikael Lundqvist, Pawel Herman, Melissa R Warden, Scott L Brincat, Earl K Miller
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/122598Abstract
Working memory (WM) activity is not as stationary or sustained as previously thought. There are brief bursts of gamma (55 to 120 Hz) and beta (20 to 35 Hz) oscillations, the former linked to stimulus information in spiking. We examine these dynamics in relation to read-out from WM, which is still not well understood. Monkeys held a sequence of two objects and had to decide if they matched a subsequent sequence. Changes in the balance of beta/gamma suggested their role in WM control. In anticipation of having to use an object for the match decision, there was an increase in spiking information about that object along with an increase in gamma and a decrease in beta. When an object was no longer needed, beta increased and gamma as well as spiking information about that object decreased. Deviations from these dynamics predicted behavioral errors. Thus, turning up or down beta could regulate gamma and the information in working memory.
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Still think that single neurons with specific functions rule the brain? Let us persuade you otherwise. We argue that cognitive control stems from dynamic, context-dependent population coding.
Stokes, M., Buschman, T.J., and Miller, E.K. (2017) Dynamic coding for flexible cognitive control. The Wiley Handbook of Cognitive Control, The Wiley Handbook of Cognitive Control, Edited by Tobias Egner, John Wiley & Sons, 2017(Chichester, West Sussex, UK). View PDF
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New Miller Lab paper:
Jia, N., Brincat, S.L., Salazar-Gomez, A., Panko, M., Guenther, F. and Miller, E.K. (2017) Decoding of intended saccade direction in an oculomotor brain-computer interface. Journal of Neural Engineering, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1088/1741-2552/aa5a3eAbstract
Objective. To date, invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) research has largely focused on replacing lost limb functions using signals from of hand/arm areas of motor cortex. However, the oculomotor system may be better suited to BCI applications involving rapid serial selection from spatial targets, such as choosing from a set of possible words displayed on a computer screen in an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) application. Here we aimed to demonstrate the feasibility of a BCI utilizing the oculomotor system. Approach. We developed a chronic intracortical BCI in monkeys to decode intended saccadic eye movement direction using activity from multiple frontal cortical areas. Main results. Intended saccade direction could be decoded in real time with high accuracy, particularly at contralateral locations. Accurate decoding was evident even at the beginning of the BCI session; no extensive BCI experience was necessary. High-frequency (80-500 Hz) local field potential magnitude provided the best performance, even over spiking activity, thus simplifying future BCI applications. Most of the information came from the frontal and supplementary eye fields, with relatively little contribution from dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Significance. Our results support the feasibility of high-accuracy intracortical oculomotor BCIs that require little or no practice to operate and may be ideally suited for point and click computer operation as used in most current AAC systems. -
Antzoulatos, E. G., & Miller, E. K. (2016). Synchronous beta rhythms of frontoparietal networks support only behaviorally relevant representations. eLife, 5, e17822.
Abstract:
Categorization has been associated with distributed networks of the primate brain, including the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and posterior parietal cortex (PPC). Although category-selective spiking in PFC and PPC has been established, the frequency-dependent dynamic interactions of frontoparietal networks are largely unexplored. We trained monkeys to perform a delayed-match-to-spatial-category task while recording spikes and local field potentials from the PFC and PPC with multiple electrodes. We found category-selective beta- and delta-band synchrony between and within the areas. However, in addition to the categories, delta synchrony and spiking activity also reflected irrelevant stimulus dimensions. By contrast, beta synchrony only conveyed information about the task-relevant categories. Further, category-selective PFC neurons were synchronized with PPC beta oscillations, while neurons that carried irrelevant information were not. These results suggest that long-range beta-band synchrony could act as a filter that only supports neural representations of the variables relevant to the task at hand. -
Why multitasking is BAD for your brain: Neuroscientist warns it wrecks productivity and causes mistakes
- Earl Miller has advised that people should avoid multitasking altogether
- Switching between tasks take more mental energy to get back on track
- They advise removing distractions to overcome the brain’s thirst for new information and to block out time to focus on individual tasks
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Stanley, D.A., Roy, J.E., Aoi, M.C., Kopell, N.J., and Miller, E.K. (2016) Low-beta oscillations turn up the gain during category judgments. Cerebral Cortex. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhw356 View PDF
Abstract:
Synchrony between local field potential (LFP) rhythms is thought to boost the signal of attended sensory inputs. Other cognitive functions could benefit from such gain control. One is categorization where decisions can be difficult if categories differ in subtle ways. Monkeys were trained to flexibly categorize smoothly varying morphed stimuli, using orthogonal boundaries to carve up the same stimulus space in 2 different ways. We found evidence for category-specific patterns of low-beta (16–20 Hz) synchrony in the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC). This synchrony was stronger when a given category scheme was relevant. We also observed an overall increase in low-beta LFP synchrony for stimuli that were near the category boundary and thus more difficult to categorize. Beta category selectivity was evident in partial field–field coherence measurements, which measure local synchrony, but the boundary enhancement was not. Thus, it seemed that category selectivity relied on local interactions while boundary enhancement was a more global effect. The results suggest that beta synchrony helps form category ensembles and may reflect recruitment of additional cortical resources for categorizing challenging stimuli, thus serving as a form of gain control. -
Now out from behind the paywall:
http://discovermagazine.com/2016/oct/your-attention-please