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Paper   IPM / Cognitive Sciences / 17423
School of Cognitive Sciences
  Title:   Sensory representation of visual stimuli in the coupling of low-frequency phase to spike times
  Author(s): 
1.  M. Zarei
2.  M. Jahed
3.  M. Parto Dezfouli
4.  M. Daliri
  Status:   Published
  Journal: Brain Struct Funct
  Vol.:  227
  Year:  2022
  Supported by:  IPM
  Abstract:
Neural synchronization has been engaged in several brain mechanisms. Previous studies have shown that the interaction between the time of spiking activity and phase of local field potentials (LFPs) plays a key role in many cognitive functions. However, the potential role of this spike-LFP phase coupling (SPC) in neural coding is not fully understood. Here, we sought to investigate the role of this SPC for encoding the sensory properties of visual stimuli. To this end, we measured SPC strength in the preferred and anti-preferred motion directions of stimulus presented inside the receptive field of middle temporal (MT) neurons. We found a selective response in terms of SPC strength for different directions of motion. Remarkably, this selective function is inverted with respect to the spiking activity. In other words, the least SPC occurs for the preferred direction (based on the spike rate), and vice versa; the strongest SPC is induced in the anti-preferred direction. Altogether, these findings imply that the neural system may use spike-LFP phase coupling in the primate visual cortex to encode sensory information.

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