Nice review of the mechanisms and role of dopamine receptors in the prefrontal cortex.
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The title says it all (almost). Voloh et al found increased theta-gamma cross-frequency coupling between the anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex during covert shifts of attention.
Theta–gamma coordination between anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex indexes correct attention shifts
Benjamin Voloh, Taufik A. Valiante, Stefan Everling, and Thilo Womelsdorf
PNAS 2015 ; published ahead of print June 22, 2015, doi:10.1073/pnas.1500438112 -
Tremblay et al decode the allocation of attention, stimulus location, and saccade from local field potentials in a frequency-dependent matter. Decoding from LFPs was more stable across time than decoding from spikes.
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Siegel, M., Buschman, T.J., and Miller, E.K. (2015) Cortical information flow during flexible sensorimotor decisions. Science. 19 June 2015: 1352-1355.
During flexible behavior, multiple brain regions encode sensory inputs, the current task, and choices. It remains unclear how these signals evolve. We simultaneously recorded neuronal activity from six cortical regions (MT, V4, IT, LIP, PFC and FEF) of monkeys reporting the color or motion of stimuli. Following a transient bottom-up sweep, there was a top-down flow of sustained task information from frontoparietal to visual cortex. Sensory information flowed from visual to parietal and prefrontal cortex. Choice signals developed simultaneously in frontoparietal regions and travelled to FEF and sensory cortex. This suggests that flexible sensorimotor choices emerge in a frontoparietal network from the integration of opposite flows of sensory and task information.
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Luo and Maunsell used a specially designed task to show that the only effect of attention in visual cortex is to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of neurons.
See highlight by Timothy J. Buschman:
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Working memory has long been thought to depend on sustained firing of cortical neurons. However, single neurons showing unbroken sustained activity is rare and average population activity is often only strong near the end of a memory delay. Mark Stokes presents the intriguing hypothesis for activity-silent working memory. He suggests that working memory depends on patterns of functional connectivity between neurons, not sustained activity.
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Takeda et al show that layer-specific oscillatory synchrony during successful recall of memories. Specifically, there was laminar specific feedback from area 36 to area TE that supported the recall of a paired associate object.
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One person’s (John Lisman) take on the state of the art of neuroscience in 2015.
The Challenge of Understanding the Brain: Where We Stand in 2015 -
Woolgar et al show preferential engagement of human frontoparietal networks with an increase in the complexity of task rules. Plus, the frontoparietal cortex adjusts representations to make rules that are more behavioral confusable easier to discriminate.
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Earl Miller will discuss the dangers of multitasking today (5/23/15) live on the air on WURD 900AM at 11:20am.
http://900amwurd.com/