Categorical Representation of Visual Stimuli in the Primate Prefrontal Cortex

Freedman, David J.; Riesenhuber, Maximilian; Poggio, Tomaso; Miller, Earl K.

doi:10.1126/science.291.5502.312

Cited by 990 publications

(892 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…On category trials, MVPA decoded stimulus category from PFC, but not occipitotemporal cortex (Lee et al 2013). These two findings are consistent with prior studies demonstrating that the lateral PFC preferentially encodes and maintains arbitrary and abstract representations of object category over representations of visual similarity (Meyers et al 2008, Freedman et al 2001, Chen et al 2012. Further support for the distinction between stimulus-selective lateral PFC representations and sensory representations comes from a second fMRI study that required subjects to remember over a short interval either faces, scenes or both categories of information ).…”

Section: Working Memory At the Systems Levelsupporting

confidence: 79%

The Cognitive Neuroscience of Working Memory

2007

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For over 50 years, psychologists and neuroscientists have recognized the importance of a "working memory" to coordinate processing when multiple goals are active, and to guide behavior with information that is not present in the immediate environment. In recent years, psychological theory and cognitive neuroscience data have converged on the idea that information is encoded into working memory via the allocation of attention to internal representations -be they semantic long-term memory (e.g., letters, digits, words), sensory, or motoric. Thus, information-based multivariate analyses of human functional MRI data typically find evidence for the temporary representation of stimuli in regions that also process this information in nonworking-memory contexts. The prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, exerts control over behavior by biasing the salience of mnemonic representations, and adjudicating among competing, context-dependent rules. The "control of the controller" emerges from a complex interplay between PFC and striatal circuits, and ascending dopaminergic neuromodulatory signals.

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Section: Working Memory At the Systems Levelsupporting

confidence: 79%

The Cognitive Neuroscience of Working Memory

2007

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“…Both behavioral and neural evidence indicates that monkeys are capable of acquiring categorical representations (e.g., Cromer, Roy, & Miller, 2010;Freedman, Riesenhuber, Poggio, & Miller, 2001). For realistic stimulus sets, learners are unlikely to ever compare all possible pairs of N objects (a quantity that scales with N 2 ) on every dimension of interest.…”

Section: Multiple Levels Of Representation For Comparative Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The discovery and comparison of symbolic magnitudes

Chen

Holyoak

2014

Cognitive Psychology

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a b s t r a c tHumans and other primates are able to make relative magnitude comparisons, both with perceptual stimuli and with symbolic inputs that convey magnitude information. Although numerous models of magnitude comparison have been proposed, the basic question of how symbolic magnitudes (e.g., size or intelligence of animals) are derived and represented in memory has received little attention. We argue that symbolic magnitudes often will not correspond directly to elementary features of individual concepts. Rather, magnitudes may be formed in working memory based on computations over more basic features stored in long-term memory. We present a model of how magnitudes can be acquired and compared based on BARTlet, a representationally simpler version of Bayesian Analogy with Relational Transformations (BART; Lu, Chen, & Holyoak, 2012). BARTlet operates on distributions of magnitude variables created by applying dimension-specific weights (learned with the aid of empirical priors derived from pre-categorical comparisons) to more primitive features of objects. The resulting magnitude distributions, formed and maintained in working memory, are sensitive to contextual influences such as the range of stimuli and polarity of the question. By incorporating psychological reference points that control the precision of magnitudes in working memory and applying the tools of signal detection theory, BARTlet is able to account for a wide range of empirical phenomena involving magnitude comparisons, including the symbolic distance effect and the semantic congruity effect. We discuss the role of reference points in cognitive and social decision-making, and implications for the evolution of relational representations.

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“…This frontoparietal representation acts as a source of bias in other brain systems, supporting related information processing (Desimone and Duncan, 1995;Dehaene et al, 1998;Miller and Cohen, 2001). In the behaving monkey, single-cell recording shows that many cells in the LPFC code task-relevant information (Sakagami and Niki, 1994;Freedman et al, 2001). Included is coding of relevant stimulus categorizations, rules, rewards, working-memory contents, etc.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frontoparietal Activity with Minimal Decision and Control

Hon¹,

Epstein²,

Owen³

et al. 2006

J. Neurosci.

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In the human brain, a well known frontoparietal circuit, including lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC), presupplementary motor area/ anterior cingulate cortex (pre-SMA/ACC), and both the superior and inferior parietal cortex, is involved in cognitive control. One proposal is that the frontoparietal cortex holds a flexible description of attended or task-relevant information, biasing processing in favor of this information in many different parts of the brain. Here, we separate frontoparietal coding of attended information from its active use in behavior. In two experiments, subjects watch a stream of visual stimuli in a fixed location. In the first experiment, there is no task to perform; in the second, decisions are orthogonal to the occurrence of new stimulus events. Even in these simple circumstances, we find that attended stimulus changes give extensive activation of LPFC, pre-SMA/ACC and parietal cortex, whereas unattended changes do not. Even without behavior to control, these classical "control" regions are active in simple update of attended information.

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Categorical Representation of Visual Stimuli in the Primate Prefrontal Cortex

Cited by 990 publications

References 29 publications

The Cognitive Neuroscience of Working Memory

The Cognitive Neuroscience of Working Memory

The discovery and comparison of symbolic magnitudes

Frontoparietal Activity with Minimal Decision and Control

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