Abstract
The mean firing rate of a border-ownership selective (BOS) neuron encodes where a foreground figure relative to its classical receptive field. Physiological experiments have demonstrated that top-down attention increases firing rates and decreases spike synchrony between them. To elucidate mechanisms of attentional modulation on rates and synchrony of BOS neurons, we developed a spiking neuron network model: BOS neurons receive synaptic input which reflects visual input. The synaptic input strength is modulated multiplicatively by the activity of Grouping neurons whose activity represents the object’s location and mediates top-down attentional projection to BOS neurons. Model simulations agree with experimental findings, showing that attention to an object increases the firing rates of BOS neurons representing it while decreasing spike synchrony between pairs of such neurons. Our results suggest that top-down attention multiplicatively emphasizes synaptic current due to bottom-up visual inputs.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Zhou, H., Friedman, H.S., von der Heydt, R.: Coding of border ownership in monkey visual cortex. J. Neurosci. 20, 6594–6611 (2000)
Qiu, F.T., Sugihara, T., von der Heydt, R.: Figure-ground mechanisms provide structure for selective attention. Nat. Neurosci. 10, 1492–1499 (2007)
Martin, A.B., von der Heydt, R.: Spike synchrony reveals emergence of proto-objects in visual cortex. J. Neurosci. 35, 6860–6870 (2015)
Craft, E., Schütze, H., Niebur, E., von der Heydt, R.: A neural model of figure-ground organization. J. Neurophysiol. 97, 4310–4326 (2007)
Wagatsuma, N., Potjans, T.C., Diesmann, M., Fukai, T.: Layer-dependent attentional processing by top-down signals in a visual cortical microcircuit model. Front. Comp. Neurosci. (2011). doi:10.3389/fncom.2011.00031
Wagatsuma, N., Potjans, T.C., Diesmann, M., Sakai, K., Fukai, T.: Spatial and feature-based attention in a layered cortical microcircuit model. PLoS ONE (2013). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0080788
Roelfsema, P.R., Lamme, V.A., Spekreijse, H.: Synchrony and covariation of firing rates in the primary visual cortex during contour grouping. Nat. Neurosci. 7, 982–991 (2004)
Dong, Y., Mihalas, S., Qiu, F., von der Heydt, R., Niebur, E.: Synchrony and the binding problem in macaque visual cortex. J. Vis. (2008). doi:10.1167/8.7.30
Self, M.W., Koojimans, R.N., Super, H., Lamme, V.A., Roelfsema, P.R.: Different glutamate receptors convey feedforward and recurrent processing in Macaque V1. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 109, 11031–11036 (2012)
Wagatsuma, N., von der Heydt R., Niebur, E.: Spiking synchrony generated by modulatory common input through NMDA-type synapses. J. Neurophysiol. (in press). doi:10.1152/jn.01142.2015
Acknowledgements
This work was partly supported by KAKENHI (no. 26880019). We thank Japanese Neural Network Society for supporting English proofreading.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Wagatsuma, N., von der Heydt, R., Niebur, E. (2016). Modeling Attention-Induced Reduction of Spike Synchrony in the Visual Cortex. In: Hirose, A., Ozawa, S., Doya, K., Ikeda, K., Lee, M., Liu, D. (eds) Neural Information Processing. ICONIP 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9947. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46687-3_40
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46687-3_40
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-46686-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-46687-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)