Topic: neural gain

Visual perception relies on a distributed thalamocortical network whose modes of interaction are governed by the neuromodulatory systems. Here we set out to test the hypothesis that bursts of noradrenaline from the locus coeruleus help to facilitate shifts in perception by increasing neural gain across the cortex and flattening the whole brain ‘energy landscape’. In line with our hypothesis, shifts in the perceptual interpretation of an ambiguous image were associated with peaks in pupil diameter – a correlate of adrenergic tone. We trained a recurrent neural network (RNN) to perform an analog