Topic: Fano factor

Sensory neuron responses vary across repeated presentations of the same stimuli, but whether this trial-to-trial variability represents noise versus unidentified signals remains unresolved (1–3). Some of the variability can be attributed to correlations of neural activity with locomotion, arousal, and other overt movements (4–7). We hypothesized that distributed brain states, i.e., patterns of neural activity observable in other brain regions, may account for more of the unexplained trial-to-trial variability in responses of sensory cortical neurons. To test this, we used Neuropixels 2.0 probe

Perception is not a faithful representation of the sensory world; rather, it is an inference of the most likely explanation given sensory evidence. Illusions arise due to rational mistakes in perceptual inference, exemplifying the dichotomy between faithful representation and inferred representation. We utilized illusory contours to ask how and where perceptual inference is encoded in the mouse visual cortex. In illusory contour perception, the perceived whole is greater than the sum of its parts. As such, we hypothesized that brain regions encoding perceptual inference would show enhanced neu

Center-surround processing (CSP) is a ubiquitous feature of the brain, starting from early sensory processing (e.g., context-dependent retinal encoding) to representing abstract concepts (e.g., context-dependent object representation), manifesting itself in both behavior and neural responses. While CSP in neural responses is typically modeled using divisive normalization or in purely descriptive terms, none of them can account for the bewildering range of effects documented for CSP of motion alone. Furthermore, a normative model that links these neural effects to function and behavior is still