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.
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Hohl et al use a task with richer behavioral output to better establish a link between neural activity and behavior.
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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
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Discovery that some seizures arise in glial cells could offer new targets for epilepsy treatment. MIT News Release
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Boot et al show that it is important for psychology studies to have active controls. To exclude placebo effects, the control should include the expectation of change without the actual manipulation.
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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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Betsy Murray and crew find evidence to resolve two different views of the function of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). One view is that the OFC provides inhibitory control and emotion regulation. The other view is that processes the value of things. They show that damage limited to the OFC does not affect inhibitory or emotional control, but damage to nearby fiber tracts do. There you go.
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Pannunzi et al propose a model of visual category learning in which bottom-up sensory inputs to the inferior temporal cortex are sculpted by top-down inputs from the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The PFC improves signal to noise by enhancing the category-relevant features of the stimuli.
Miller 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 »Freedman, D.J., Riesenhuber, M., Poggio, T., and Miller, E.K (2003) A comparison of primate prefrontal and inferior temporal cortices during visual categorization. Journal of Neuroscience, 23(12):5235-5246. View PDF »
Meyers, E.M., Freedman, D.J., Kreiman, G., Miller, E.K., and Poggio, T. (2008) Dynamic population coding of category information in the inferior temporal cortex and prefrontal cortex. Journal of Neurophysiology. 100:1407-1419. View PDF »
Muhammad, R., Wallis, J.D., and Miller, E.K. (2006) A comparison of abstract rules in the prefrontal cortex, premotor cortex, the inferior temporal cortex and the striatum. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18: 974-989. View PDF »
Seger, C.A. and Miller, E.K. (2010) Category learning in the brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, Vol. 33: 203-219. View PDF »
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Ekstrom and Watrous review the role of low frequency oscillatory coupling in cognition. The propose that different resonant frequencies within the same networks support movement vs memory related functions. They provide further evidence and argument for a role for oscillatory coupling in multiplexing of function. In other words, different frequency coupling can allow the same networks to have different roles by allowing them to communicate different messages to different targets.
Miller Lab work on oscillatory coupling and multiplexing:
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 View PDF »Miller, E.K. and Buschman, T.J. (2013) Cortical circuits for the control of attention. Current Opinion in Neurobiology. 23:216–222 View PDF »
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Matt Chafee and crew show that monkeys under the influence of ketamine show similar deficits as human schizophrenia patients on a test of context processing.
Blackman et al 2013