Cortical membrane potential signature of optimal states for sensory signal detection

By Matthew McGinley, Stephen V. David, David A. McCormick. Neuron, 2015

710 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The neural correlates of optimal states for signal detection task performance are largely unknown. One hypothesis holds that optimal states exhibit tonically depolarized cortical neurons with enhanced spiking activity, such as occur during movement. We recorded membrane potentials of auditory cortical neurons in mice trained on a challenging tone-in-noise detection task while assessing arousal with simultaneous pupillometry and hippocampal recordings. Arousal measures accurately predicted multiple modes of membrane potential activity, including: rhythmic slow oscillations at low arousal, stable hyperpolarization at intermediate arousal, and depolarization during phasic or tonic periods of hyper-arousal. Walking always occurred during hyper-arousal. Optimal signal detection behavior and sound-evoked responses, at both sub-threshold and spiking levels, occurred at intermediate arousal when pre-decision membrane potentials were stably hyperpolarized. These results reveal a cortical physiological signature of the classically-observed inverted-U relationship between task performance and arousal, and that optimal detection exhibits enhanced sensory-evoked responses and reduced background synaptic activity.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/68a548106b0e71503db4c48302f9109915a60557

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Citations in the corpus

Waking State: Rapid Variations Modulate Neural and Behavioral Responses (2015, positive): “…following a bout of locomotion or whisking (e.g., Crochet and Petersen, 2006; Gentet et al., 2010; Polack et al., 2013) (Figure 1B), even though the pupil usually is still large at the end of running periods (e.g., Figures 2–4) (McGinley et al., 2015; Reimer et al., 2014; Vinck et al., 2015).”
Relationships between pupil diameter and neuronal activity in the locus coeruleus, colliculi, and cingulate cortex (2015, methodology): “Pupil diameter also can covary with neuronal activity in cortex, which is thought to reflect, at least in part, modulation by the LC-NE system (Vinck et al., 2015; Reimer et al., 2014; Ebitz and Platt, 2015; Eldar et al., 2013; McGinley et al., 2015).”
Parallel processing by cortical inhibition enables context-dependent behavior (2016, neutral): “2, Student’s paired two-tailed t-test, t(14) = 6.”