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Signals in inferotemporal and perirhinal cortex suggest an untangling of visual target information

Nature Neuroscience volume 16, pages 1132–1139 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Finding sought visual targets requires our brains to flexibly combine working memory information about what we are looking for with visual information about what we are looking at. To investigate the neural computations involved in finding visual targets, we recorded neural responses in inferotemporal cortex (IT) and perirhinal cortex (PRH) as macaque monkeys performed a task that required them to find targets in sequences of distractors. We found similar amounts of total task-specific information in both areas; however, information about whether a target was in view was more accessible using a linear read-out or, equivalently, was more untangled in PRH. Consistent with the flow of information from IT to PRH, we also found that task-relevant information arrived earlier in IT. PRH responses were well-described by a functional model in which computations in PRH untangle input from IT by combining neurons with asymmetric tuning correlations for target matches and distractors.

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Figure 1: Theoretical proposals of the neural mechanisms involved in finding visual targets.
Figure 2: The delayed match-to-sample task and example neural responses.
Figure 3: Population performance.
Figure 4: Additional population performance measures.
Figure 5: Discriminating between classes of models that predict more untangled target match information in PRH than IT.
Figure 6: Modeling the transformation from IT to PRH.
Figure 7: The neural mechanisms underlying untangling.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Y. Cohen, J.A. Movshon, E. Simoncelli and A. Stocker for helpful discussions. We are especially grateful to D. Brainard and J. Gold for detailed comments on the work and on the manuscript. We also thank J. Deutsch for technical assistance and C. Veeder for veterinary support. This work was supported by the National Eye Institute of the US National Institutes of Health (award number R01EY020851), a Sloan Foundation award to N.C.R. and contributions from a National Eye Institute core grant (award number P30EY001583).

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

    Marino Pagan, Luke S Urban, Margot P Wohl & Nicole C Rust

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  1. Marino Pagan
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  2. Luke S Urban
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  3. Margot P Wohl
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Contributions

N.C.R., M.P.W. and M.P. conducted the experiments. M.P. and L.S.U. developed the data alignment software. M.P.W. and N.C.R. sorted the spike waveforms. M.P. and N.C.R. developed and executed the analyses. M.P. and N.C.R. wrote the manuscript. N.C.R. supervised the project.

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Correspondence to Nicole C Rust.

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Pagan, M., Urban, L., Wohl, M. et al. Signals in inferotemporal and perirhinal cortex suggest an untangling of visual target information. Nat Neurosci 16, 1132–1139 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3433

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