Orientation decoding

The exclusive attribution of working memory (WM) retention to persistent frontal activity [1,2] has been questioned by implications of spike-silent WM [3] in early visual cortex (EVC) [4,5,6]. Spike-silent WM might partly be explained by short-term plasticity (STP) [7], where perceptual encoding leaves a neural trace that can be retrieved using perturbation methods [8,9]. However, STP traces cannot easily withstand continual visual stimulation. In contrast, $modulatory$ top-down feedback [10] (i.e., altering spiking propensity without inducing spiking directly [11]) from frontal regions to EVC

…and 0.37 degrees respectively in an orientation decoding task. These neural thresholds were almost 100 times smaller than the behavioral discrimination thresholds reported

…thresholds of ∼0.34° in an orientation decoding task. These thresholds were nearly 100 times smaller than those reported behaviourally in mice. The discrepancy between neural and behavioural discrimination