Neuroscience – Page 35 – The Miller Lab @ MIT

22

Jul 2013

Flexible frequency control of cortical oscillations enables computations required for working memory

Miller Lab

Neuroscience

Dipoppa and Gutkin propose a model of working memory in which gamma-beta oscillations gates access, theta oscillations protects working memory from distractions, and alpha oscillations clears out old memories.

This is consistent with our observations that beta helps from ensembles for rules held in working memory while alpha clears out a dominant ensemble so that a weaker one can be used:
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
18

Jul 2013

Distinct and Overlapping Frontoparietal Representations of Task Rules

Miller Lab

Neuroscience

Zhang et al studied rule-based behavior by either having human subjects choose the rule themselves or by instructing them to the rule. They found context-dependent and context-independent (chosen vs instructed) rule representations in frontal and parietal cortex. This gives insight into the architecture of cognitive control.
18

Jul 2013

Special Processing for Faces? A Cautionary Tale for fMRI

Miller Lab

Neuroscience, Psychology

Cowell and Cottrell trained a computational model on images used in fMRI studies of object and face processing. They used multivariate pattern analysis and were able to replicate evidence for a specialized face area even though the model had no specialized processing for faces. The authors suggest that fMRI evidence for a specialized face area should be interpreted with caution.
16

Jul 2013

Visual working memory capacity: from psychophysics and neurobiology to individual differences

Miller Lab

Neuroscience, Psychology

Excellent review of an important topic: Working memory capacity. The limitation in working memory capacity is the most objective, easily measured, and tractable property of conscious thought..
Luck and Vogel (2013)

Miller Lab work cited:
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 »
12

Jul 2013

Microcircuits for Hierarchical Elaboration of Object Coding Across Primate Temporal Areas

Miller Lab

Neuroscience

Hirabayashi et al observed microcircuits for object association using multiple single-unit recordings in temporal cortex. This suggests that microcircuits creates precursor representations for a given feature in previous areas in the cortical hierarchy.
11

Jul 2013

Predictive Suppression of Cortical Excitability and Its Deficit in Schizophrenia

Miller Lab

Neuroscience, Psychology

Peter Lakatos and Charlie Schroeder have conducted elegant work showing that the brain entrains its rhythms to attended sensory inputs. Here, Lakatos et al show that normal human subjects show increased rhythmic entrainment with increasing task demands, By contrast, schizophrenic patients are less able to match their brain rhythms to attended stimuli, even when the task is highly demanding.

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 »

Buschman, T.J. and Miller, E.K. (2009) Serial, covert, shifts of attention during visual search are reflected by the frontal eye fields and correlated with population oscillations. Neuron, 63: 386-396. View PDF »
11

Jul 2013

Sensory Population Decoding for Visually Guided Movements

Miller Lab

Neuroscience

Hohl et al use a task with richer behavioral output to better establish a link between neural activity and behavior.
11

Jul 2013

Review: The Brain on Stress: Vulnerability and Plasticity of the Prefrontal Cortex over the Life Course

Miller Lab

Neuroscience, Psychology

Your prefrontal cortex becomes less resistant to stress as you age. McEwen and Morrison tell you all about it.
11

Jul 2013

Prefrontal Contributions to Visual Selective Attention

Miller Lab

Neuroscience

The 2013 Annual Review of Neuroscience is here. It includes a very nice review of the role of the prefrontal cortex in visual attention by Squire et al
10

Jul 2013

Study finds a new culprit for epileptic seizures

Miller Lab

In The News, Neuroscience

Discovery that some seizures arise in glial cells could offer new targets for epilepsy treatment. MIT News Release