High-frequency, long-range coupling between prefrontal and visual cortex during attention

By G. Gregoriou, S. Gotts, Huihui Zhou, Robert Desimone. Science, 2009

1,269 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Attention and Synchrony Neural activity in the visual cortex becomes synchronized with attention and other behavioral states. However, the source of this synchrony is still unknown. Gregoriou et al. (p. 1207) tested the hypothesis that synchronized activity from the frontal eye field is one of the causes of the synchrony in monkey visual cortical area V4 during attention. With attention, neural activity in area V4 synchronized with frontal eye field activity when a stimulus fell in a joint receptive field, but did not do so when the fields were not overlapping. Synchrony in neuronal firing within a specific frequency range may regulate interactions between brain structures. Electrical recordings in humans and monkeys show attentional enhancement of evoked responses and gamma synchrony in ventral stream cortical areas. Does this synchrony result from intrinsic activity in visual cortex or from inputs from other structures? Using paired recordings in the frontal eye field (FEF) and area V4, we found that attention to a stimulus in their joint receptive field leads to enhanced oscillatory coupling between the two areas, particularly at gamma frequencies. This coupling appeared to be initiated by FEF and was time-shifted by about 8 to 13 milliseconds across a range of frequencies. Considering the expected conduction and synaptic delays between the areas, this time-shifted coupling at gamma frequencies may optimize the postsynaptic impact of spikes from one area upon the other, improving cross-area communication with attention.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cc7bfbcc4d7061450c279f2f970550a053ded931

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Citations in the corpus

Oscillatory synchronization in large-scale cortical networks predicts perception. (2011, background): “On the one hand, invasive recordings reveal task-specific synchronization between pairs of focal cortical sites (Buschman and Miller, 2007; Gregoriou et al., 2009; Maier et al., 2008; Pesaran et al., 2008; Roelfsema et al., 1997; Saalmann et al., 2007; von Stein et al., 2000), but require the…”
A mechanistic cortical microcircuit of attention for amplification, normalization and suppression. (2015, background): “, 2007) or enhances the temporal coupling of neurons (Gregoriou et al., 2009).”
Spatial attention decorrelates intrinsic activity fluctuations in macaque area V4. (2009, result): “Relationship to Previous Studies of Attention Previous studies have reported that attention increases correlations among local populations of neurons (Fries et al., 2001; Gregoriou et al., 2009; for a recent review, see Womelsdorf and Fries, 2007).”
The pairwise phase consistency: A bias-free measure of rhythmic neuronal synchronization (2010, background): “For every neuron, we computed the spike–LFP phase for every spike by Fast Fourier Transforming an LFP segment of length T samples, X j f ð Þ = X T t = 1 w t ð Þx j t ð Þexp i2πft ð Þ: ð28Þ Here, w(t) is a Hanning window, x j (t) is the unfiltered LFP segment that is centered around the spike, f is t”
Dynamic functional connectivity: Promise, issues, and interpretations (2013, background): “For example, long-range coherence in the gamma band has been found to index, among other functions, the coding for a prospective reward (Fujisawa and Buzsaki, 2011) or an attended, behaviorally relevant visual stimulus (Bosman et al., 2012; Gregoriou et al., 2009; Grothe et al., 2012).”
Neurophysiological and Computational Principles of Cortical Rhythms in Cognition (2010, methodology): “Analysis methods have been developed to interrogate the directionality of the flow of signals between two or multiple recorded areas, such as the Granger causality analysis (93, 118, 244, 371, 381, 560) and its frequency-domain representation (38, 244).”
A Tutorial Review of Functional Connectivity Analysis Methods and Their Interpretational Pitfalls (2016, methodology): “In this way, one could try and distinguish direct from indirect interactions, using an extended formulation of Granger causality, called partial Granger causality (Guo et al., 2008), or conditional Granger causality (Ding et al., 2006; Wen et al., 2013).”
Gamma-band synchronization in the neocortex: novel analysis methods and their application to sensory and motivational systems (2013, methodology): “phase-coupling of oscillatory activity, which has been proposed as a candidate mechanism for the flexible routing of neuronal signals (Abeles, 1982; Fries, 2005; Varela et al., 2001; Burchell et al., 1998; Womelsdorf et al., 2010b; Gielen et al., 2010; Börgers & Kopell, 2008; Salinas & Sejnowski, 20”
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Alpha-beta and gamma rhythms subserve feedback and feedforward influences among human visual cortical areas (2016, positive): “In agreement with this, gamma-band GC influences between macaque FEF and V4 predominate in the FEF-to-V4 direction after an attentional cue, but subsequently predominate in the V4-to-FEF direction (Gregoriou et al., 2009).”
Intention, action planning, and decision making in parietal-frontal circuits. (2009, background): “Changes in spike-field coherence may be a useful signature for tracing the dynamics of communication between cortical areas (Pesaran et al., 2008; Gregoriou et al., 2009).”
Insects have the capacity for subjective experience (2016, background): “, 2010), and long-range synchrony or binding of gamma oscillations, have been consistently proposed to underlie pain and other feelings (Gray and Singer, 1989; Engel et al., 1991; Engel and Singer, 2001; Salinas and Sejnowski, 2001; Fries et al., 2007; Hauck et al., 2007; Gregoriou et al., 2009; Fri”
Cortical State and Attention (2011, neutral): “FEFs project to extrastriate visual cortices (these feedback projections are glutamatergic), and spiking activity in FEFs is correlated with attentio”