The reading mechanism of neuronal information in the brain is analyzed.

On September 20, the journal Neuron published an online paper entitled "The Reading Mechanism of Neuron Information in the Brain by Combining the Measurement of Decision Signals and The Interference of Microcurrent Stimulation" by the Space Perception SergentSiology Group of the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligent Technology, and the Key Laboratory of Neurobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
in this study, while the sober macaques performed spatial movement direction identification tasks, the researchers recorded the neuronal reactions of the upper temporal cortex, the mid-temporal cortex and the inner cortex of the upper temporal cortex in the cerebral cortex, and the two components of these reactions, namely, the sensory information encoded by neurons, and the signals of cognitive decision-making with the macaques, and the use of micro-current interference to detect the three brain regions.
brain perception of space consists of two important stages: one is the coding stage, i.e. the sound, color, light and other stimuli in the outside environment are introduced into the brain center through various sensories, activating the neuronal components that process the corresponding sensory stimuli, thus encoding the external stimuli into the electrical activities of the corresponding neurons, such as preference for a particular neuron. The direction of motion, spatial orientation, or spatial lysing of the cell; the second is the decoding or reading stage, that is, the electrical signals of these neurons through the nervous system level transmission, by the downstream neurons extract information, and eventually into the brain's perception of external stimuli, and on this basis to form the final decision, to make specific behavior.
the coding mechanism of neurons in the brain has been extensively studied, but the second phase of the study on decoding is relatively small, the specific decoding mechanism is not clear.
one of the important ways to do this is to measure which signals are associated with choices in the electrical distribution fluctuations of the corresponding sensory neurons while the experimental animals perform cognitive decision-making tasks.
Although many sensory cortex has been found in many sensory cortexs, whether these signals directly reflect whether the neurons encode the information is read and used by the brain to form a choice, or just reflect the brain after the formation of a choice, and then feedback to the upstream neurons a downward signal, there has been a fierce debate.
these arguments are currently confined to the theoretical level, and there is a lack of strong experimental evidence on both sides of the argument.
: There are two types of cells in the cerebral cortex of macaques, sensory-decision-consistency cells (left) and sensory-decision-decision opposite cells (right).
are connected by a specific correlation noise structure between the two types of cells (intermediate heat map).
microcurrent stimulation experiments showed that both types of cells contributed to the cognitive decision-making of macaques, but the former had a greater read weight, about twice as much as the latter (indicated by the thickness arrow).
in the research work, Yu Xuefei, a graduate student at the Institute of Neurology, and Gu Yong, head of the space perception team, trained macaques to report the movement of the light flow they perceived in space through eye movements, and at the same time as the macaques performed their tasks, recorded the inner cortex (MST) and the mid-temporal cortex of the upper temporal lobe (MT) and the abdominal endothelial cortex (VIP) neuronal extracellular electrophysiological activities in the three brain regions, by mathematical methods to separate the two components, one is the neuron encoded visual movement direction information, that is, the sensory composition, and the other is related to the cognitive decision-making of macaques, that is, decision signals.
analysis found that in the three brain regions, sensory signals are not always consistent with decision signals, and sometimes the opposite occurs, such as some neurons prefer to encode left-wing movements, and each neuron release enhancement should encourage macaques to move more to the left ("feeling-decision-consistent cells", the lower left cell in the figure), but in behavior, macaques are more likely to choose to move to the right ("feeling-decision-reverse cells"). Further experiments
using microcurrent stimulation found that both types of cells, artificial lysing through microcurrents in the MST and MT cortex, can significantly deviate the cognitive decision-making of macaques, and the direction of deviation tends to tend to the preferred sensory information direction encoded by the neurons with electrostimulation excitement, rather than the direction reflected by the decision signal.
microcurrent stimulation "feeling-decision-consistent cells" produce more deviations than stimulation "feeling-decision-cell" in macaque cognitive decision-making, indicating that the former's reading rights are more important than the latter (the coarse arrows in the middle of the figure indicate separately).
microcurrent stimulation of VIP neurons but can not affect the cognitive decision-making of macaques, suggesting that the motor information of this brain region is not read and used by the downstream brain region in the current task.
these direct experimental results for the first time analyzed the role of sensory information encoded by neurons in the cerebral cortex and the function of decision-making information on the performance of macaques in the decoding process, providing important experimental evidence for the long-term debate about the role of decision signals in the sensory cortex, showing that the reading weight of neuroninformation in the brain is not only related to a specific brain region, but also to specific neuron clusters in a particular brain region.
also through modeling, the study also put forward a certain theoretical expectation, that there is a negative correlation between the two types of neuronal clusters, pending further verification in subsequent experiments.
the study was completed by Yu Xuefei under the guidance of Gu Yong.
the subject was supported by the NSFC and the Ministry of Science and Technology.
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