Computational neuroscience articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Human timing behavior is biased towards previously encountered intervals and is predicted by Bayesian models. Here, the authors develop a computational model based in properties of the cerebellum to show how we might encode time estimates based on prior experience.

    • Devika Narain
    • , Evan D. Remington
    •  & Mehrdad Jazayeri

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Meso-scale architecture of connectomes is usually modeled as segregated clusters and communities. Here the authors report that non-assortative communities are better able to capture the functional connectivity for some networks and offer measures of community diversity that predict cognitive performance.

    • Richard F. Betzel
    • , John D. Medaglia
    •  & Danielle S. Bassett

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The transport dynamics of messenger ribonucleoproteins in neurons is crucial to our neuronal functions, but the detail remains elusive. Song et al. show that they are transported along the dendrites in alternating run and rest phases with their own random sojourn times, following an aging Lévy walk.

    • Minho S. Song
    • , Hyungseok C. Moon
    •  & Hye Yoon Park

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Alhough humans often make a series of related decisions, it is unknown whether this is done by relying on optimal or heuristic strategies. Here, the authors show that humans rely on both the best heuristic and the optimal policy, and that these strategies are controlled by parts of the medial prefrontal cortex.

    • Christoph W. Korn
    •  & Dominik R. Bach

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Neurons in prefrontal areas including the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) represent the relative reward value of choices. Here the authors report that mOFC neurons implement divisive normalization to encode the relative values of lottery options only when the decision involves free choice.

    • Hiroshi Yamada
    • , Kenway Louie
    •  & Paul W. Glimcher

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Complex auditory stimuli such as courtship song are sensed by mechanosensory neurons (JONs) in Drosophila antennae. Here the authors report two forms of adaptation in JONs that correct for antennal position (mean) as well as background sound intensity (variance) to maintain sensitivity to natural sensory stimuli.

    • Jan Clemens
    • , Nofar Ozeri-Engelhard
    •  & Mala Murthy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    FORCE training is a . Here the authors implement FORCE training in models of spiking neuronal networks and demonstrate that these networks can be trained to exhibit different dynamic behaviours.

    • Wilten Nicola
    •  & Claudia Clopath

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Though the amplitude and frequency of neural oscillations in the alpha band are related to dissociable visual processes, they are not independent mathematically. Here, the authors show that fluctuations in instantaneous frequency predict alpha amplitude during visual discrimination tasks.

    • Stephanie Nelli
    • , Sirawaj Itthipuripat
    •  & John T. Serences

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Retinal ganglion cell subtypes are traditionally thought to encode a single visual feature across the visual field to form a feature map. Here the authors show that fast OFF ganglion cells in fact respond to two visual features, either object position or speed, depending on the stimulus location.

    • Stéphane Deny
    • , Ulisse Ferrari
    •  & Olivier Marre

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Rod photoreceptors are thought to be saturated under bright light. Here, the authors describe the physiological parameters that mediate response saturation of rod photoreceptors in mouse retina, and show that rods can drive visual responses in photopic conditions.

    • Alexandra Tikidji-Hamburyan
    • , Katja Reinhard
    •  & Thomas A. Münch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Previous studies have shown short-term plasticity in single neurons or local field potentials during brain-machine interface (BMI) training. Here the authors report long-term changes in functional connectivity of motor cortex neuronal ensemble activity as chronically amputated monkeys learn to operate a BMI.

    • Karthikeyan Balasubramanian
    • , Mukta Vaidya
    •  & Nicholas G. Hatsopoulos

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Learning about a rewarded outcome is complicated by the fact that a choice often incorporates multiple features with differing association with the reward. Here the authors demonstrate that feature-based learning is an efficient and adaptive strategy in dynamically changing environments.

    • Shiva Farashahi
    • , Katherine Rowe
    •  & Alireza Soltani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Synchronous neural activity is related with memory encoding and retrieval, but it is not clear whether this happens across the whole brain. Here, authors use intracranial recordings to show that gamma networks are largely asynchronous, desynchronizing while theta synchronizes during memory encoding and retrieval.

    • E. A. Solomon
    • , J. E. Kragel
    •  & M. J. Kahana

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Making a good decision often requires the weighing of relative short-term rewards against long-term benefits, yet how the brain does this is not understood. Here, authors show that long-term beliefs are biased by reward experience and that dissociable brain regions facilitate both types of learning.

    • Adrian G. Fischer
    • , Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde
    •  & Markus Ullsperger

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Complex networks represent systems such as neural networks and air traffic as interconnected nodes that organize themselves into subsets. Here Bertolero et al. propose a subset which they call the diverse club, which offers an alternative to the commonly used rich club.

    • M. A. Bertolero
    • , B. T. T. Yeo
    •  & M. D’Esposito

  • Article
    | Open Access

    During economic decisions, offer value cells in orbitofrontal cortex encode the values of offered goods and undergo range adaptation. Here the authors present a theory of optimal coding based on payoff maximization. For linear tuning functions, range adaptation in offer value cells ensures maximal expected payoff.

    • Aldo Rustichini
    • , Katherine E. Conen
    •  & Camillo Padoa-Schioppa

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Input decorrelation, expansion recoding and sparse activity have been proposed to separate overlapping activity patterns in feedforward networks. Here the authors use reduced and detailed spiking models to elucidate how synaptic connectivity affects the contribution of these mechanisms to pattern separation in cerebellar cortex.

    • N. Alex Cayco-Gajic
    • , Claudia Clopath
    •  & R. Angus Silver

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Resting-state functional connections have been associated with cognitive abilities but it is unclear how these connections contribute to cognition. Here Ito et al present a new approach, information transfer mapping, showing that task-relevant information can be predicted by estimated activity flow through resting-state networks.

    • Takuya Ito
    • , Kaustubh R. Kulkarni
    •  & Michael W. Cole

  • Article
    | Open Access

    People often assume that other people share their preferences, but how exactly this bias manifests itself in learning and decision-making is unclear. Here, authors show that a person's own preferences influence learning in both social and non-social situations, and that this bias improves performance.

    • Tor Tarantola
    • , Dharshan Kumaran
    •  & Benedetto De Martino

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The searchlight hypothesis proposes that the thalamic reticular nucleus regulates thalamic relay activity through focal attentional modulation. Here the authors show that the receptive field sizes of reticular neurons are small enough to provide localized feedback onto thalamic neurons in the visual pathway.

    • Cristina Soto-Sánchez
    • , Xin Wang
    •  & Judith A. Hirsch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Perisomatic-inhibitory interneurons (PIIs) contribute to the generation of gamma oscillations in the hippocampus. Here the authors demonstrate distance-dependent inhibition between PIIs in freely moving mice, and use computational analysis to show that distance-dependent inhibition supports the emergence of focal gamma bursts.

    • Michael Strüber
    • , Jonas-Frederic Sauer
    •  & Marlene Bartos

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Synaptic plasticity is the neuronal mechanism underlying learning. Here the authors construct biophysical models of pyramidal neurons that reproduce observed plasticity gradients along the dendrite and show that dendritic spike dependent LTP which is predominant in distal sections can prolong memory retention.

    • Jacopo Bono
    •  & Claudia Clopath

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Active locomotion requires closed-loop sensorimotor co ordination between perception and action. Here the authors show using behavioural, imaging and modelling approaches that gaze orientation during phototaxis behaviour in larval zebrafish is related to oscillatory dynamics of a neuronal population in the hindbrain.

    • Sébastien Wolf
    • , Alexis M. Dubreuil
    •  & Georges Debrégeas

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Focal cortical seizures result from local and widespread propagation of excitatory activity. Here the authors employ widefield calcium imaging in mouse visual areas to demonstrate that these seizures start as local synchronous activation and then propagate along the connectivity that underlies normal sensory processing.

    • L. Federico Rossi
    • , Robert C. Wykes
    •  & Matteo Carandini

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ellipsoid body (EB) neurons in the fruit fly represent the animal heading through a bump-like activity dynamics. Here the authors report a connectome-driven spiking neural circuit model of the EB and the protocerebral bridge (PB) that can maintain and update an activity bump related to the spatial orientation.

    • Ta-Shun Su
    • , Wan-Ju Lee
    •  & Chung-Chuan Lo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How a neuron integrates sensory information requires knowledge about its functional presynaptic connections. Here the authors report a new method using non-negative matrix factorization to identify the layout of presynaptic bipolar cell inputs onto retinal ganglion cells and predict their responses to natural stimuli.

    • Jian K. Liu
    • , Helene M. Schreyer
    •  & Tim Gollisch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The influence of insulin on food preference and the corresponding underlying neural circuits are unknown in humans. Here, the authors show that increasing insulin changes food preference by modulating mesolimbic neural circuits, and that this pattern is changed in insulin-resistant individuals.

    • Lena J. Tiedemann
    • , Sebastian M. Schmid
    •  & Stefanie Brassen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Though people learn that certain choices may be more advantageous, they often do not choose this option. Here, the authors explain this behaviour: people learn how good a choice is relative to the choices it has been associated with previously, and this learning takes place in the striatum.

    • Tilmann A. Klein
    • , Markus Ullsperger
    •  & Gerhard Jocham

  • Article
    | Open Access

    V2 neurons exhibit complex and diverse selectivity for visual features. Here the authors use a statistical analytical framework to model V2 responses to natural stimuli and find three organizing principles, chief among them is the cross-orientation suppression that increases response selectivity.

    • Ryan J. Rowekamp
    •  & Tatyana O. Sharpee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Machine learning algorithms can decode objects that people see or imagine from their brain activity. Here the authors present a predictive decoder combined with deep neural network representations that generalizes beyond the training set and correctly identifies novel objects that it has never been trained on.

    • Tomoyasu Horikawa
    •  & Yukiyasu Kamitani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Irregular neuronal activity is thought to underlie motor variability. Here the authors use a combination of modelling, neuronal recordings in singing birds and analysis of babbling vocalizations, including of human infants, to show that topographically organized inputs to a widely recurrent motor network self-organize to generate variable motor output.

    • Ran Darshan
    • , William E. Wood
    •  & David Hansel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    We can often observe only a small fraction of a system, which leads to biases in the inference of its global properties. Here, the authors develop a framework that enables overcoming subsampling effects, apply it to recordings from developing neural networks, and find that neural networks become critical as they mature.

    • A. Levina
    •  & V. Priesemann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The orbitofrontal cortex encodes outcomes, expected rewards and values, but it is unclear how this region uses this information to inform action selection. Here, the authors show that lateral orbitofrontal cortex anticipates upcoming choices and combines recent prior information with current sensory information.

    • Ramon Nogueira
    • , Juan M. Abolafia
    •  & Rubén Moreno-Bote

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by hallucinations and delusions. Here the authors report a novel probabilistic inference task in which compared to healthy subjects, schizophrenia patients show greater degree of circular inference that matches the severity of their clinical symptoms.

    • Renaud Jardri
    • , Sandrine Duverne
    •  & Sophie Denève

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Experience constantly shapes perception, but the neural mechanisms of this rapid plasticity are unclear. Here, Holdgraf et al. record neural activity in the human auditory cortex and show that listening to normal speech elicits rapid plasticity that increases the neural gain for features of sound that are key for speech intelligibility.

    • Christopher R. Holdgraf
    • , Wendy de Heer
    •  & Frédéric E. Theunissen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    To understand the neural code it is important to determine what spiking features contain the relevant information. Here, the authors use mathematical approaches to show that two pair-wise correlation functions, the autocorrelation function within spike trains and cross-correlation function across stimulus presentations, fully determine the neural information content.

    • Amadeus Dettner
    • , Sabrina Münzberg
    •  & Tatjana Tchumatchenko

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Neural oscillations have been proposed to process information by generating cyclic integration windows: specific portions of the oscillatory cycle when a post-synaptic neuron is especially sensitive to coincident inputs. Here, the authors demonstrate the existence and mechanism of integration windows in Kenyon cells in the locust olfactory system.

    • Nitin Gupta
    • , Swikriti Saran Singh
    •  & Mark Stopfer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Whole-brain networks of long-range neuronal pathways are characterized by interdependencies between structural features. Here the author shows that module hierarchy and rich club features in these networks are structural byproducts (spandrels) of module and hub constraints, but not of wiring-cost constraints.

    • Mikail Rubinov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Stimulus orientation in the primary visual cortex of primates and carnivores is mapped into a geometrical mosaic but the functional implications of these maps remain debated. Here the authors reveal an association between the structure of cortical orientation maps in cats, and the functions of local cortical circuits in processing patterns and contours.

    • Erin Koch
    • , Jianzhong Jin
    •  & Qasim Zaidi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Multi-layered neural architectures that implement learning require elaborate mechanisms for symmetric backpropagation of errors that are biologically implausible. Here the authors propose a simple resolution to this problem of blame assignment that works even with feedback using random synaptic weights.

    • Timothy P. Lillicrap
    • , Daniel Cownden
    •  & Colin J. Akerman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sensory cortices represent stimuli through joint activity of competing neuronal assemblies. Here the authors show that a model of visual cortex with plastic feedforward and recurrent synapses, exposed to natural images, spontaneously develops attractor dynamics between groups of similarly tuned neurons.

    • Thomas Miconi
    • , Jeffrey L. McKinstry
    •  & Gerald M. Edelman

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