Oscillatory responses in cat visual cortex exhibit inter-columnar synchronization which reflects global stimulus properties

Abstract

A fundamental step in visual pattern recognition is the establishment of relations between spatially separate features. Recently, we have shown that neurons in the cat visual cortex have oscillatory responses in the range 40-60 Hz (refs 1, 2) which occur in synchrony for cells in a functional column and are tightly correlated with a local oscillatory field potential. This led us to hypothesize that the synchronization of oscillatory responses of spatially distributed, feature selective cells might be a way to establish relations between features in different parts of the visual field. In support of this hypothesis, we demonstrate here that neurons in spatially separate columns can synchronize their oscillatory responses. The synchronization has, on average, no phase difference, depends on the spatial separation and the orientation preference of the cells and is influenced by global stimulus properties.

Intersubject variability and induced gamma in the visual cortex: DCM with empirical Bayes and neural fields

“…The functional significance of cortical gamma band activity speaks to several important issues: including its ability to coordinate communication among neural populations, for example, those involved in attending to a particular stimulus [Fries, 2009], binding input features to cortical representations [Buzsáki and Chrobak, 1995; Gray et al, 1989] and mediating information transfer [Lachaux et al, 2005; Tallon‐Baudry et al, 1996]. In particular, gamma activity has on the one hand been used to characterize functional connectivity in cortical networks, for example, [Cabral et al, 2011] and on the other to study aberrant dynamics associated with potential pathophysiology.…”

Oscillatory Brain Dynamics, Wavelet Analysis, and Cognition

“…For further studies of evoked electric and magnetic 40-Hz activity see, e.g., Galambos, Makeig, & Talmachoff (1981), Pantev et al (1991), and Ribary et al (1992). A large number of studies at the single-cell level complement these results (Llinás, 1988;Gray & Singer, 1987;Gray, König, Engel, & Singer, 1989;Eckhorn et al, 1988). The concept of evoked and induced rhythms ) is a further approach parallel to frequency analysis and resonance phenomena.…”

“…This statement is strongly based on cognitive experiments by means of single and multiple unit activity and field potentials in animals, event related potentials and EEG in humans, and a great variety of clinical studies by use of modern imaging techniques. The distributed alpha responses as reported here may add a further aspect to this problem which has so far been dominated by the widely discussed role of gamma responses for this process of perceptual binding (Gray & Singer, 1987;Gray et al, 1989;Eckhorn et al, 1988; for an overview including results at the EEG level, see, e.g., .…”

“…Recent findings by Gray and colleagues (Gray & Singer, 1987;Gray et al, 1989) The ERP frequency components (obtained by adaptive digital filtering) and also the amplitude frequency characteristics reflect a global and general frequency behavior (or frequency contents) of the compound potentials, which we call ERPs. As outlined by Başar (1980, chapters on the neural correlates of EEG and ERPs), the compound potentials and the filtered responses give only a general idea about the frequency distribution of the real neuronal activity.…”

Challenges for the understanding of the dynamics of social coordination

“…Here is further food for thoughts coming from the study of brain networks dynamics. It is proposed that synchrony between localized emergent oscillations in the brain is a way to solve the binding problem of integrating segregated sensory features (Gray et al, 1989; von der Malsburg, 1994). Interareal coherence would serve information exchange between neurons and between neurons populations (Bressler et al, 1993).…”