Sensory information

Perceptual decision-making involves interpreting sensory information to guide actions. Incoming sensory information must often be assessed in the context of other relevant information held in working memory. Despite this interdependence, the neural basis of working memory and perceptual decision-making have largely been studied separately. Thus, how the brain flexibly combines sensory information with information in memory to form decisions remains unknown. To study this interaction, we developed a novel behavioral task in which monkeys hold a set of color images in working memory as context,

The accuracy of behavior is constrained by the encoding of sensory information. However little is known about how reliable encoding emerges as animals develop during early life. A better understanding of these developmental processes has the potential to aid in the design of artificial learning systems, and help reveal how neurodevelopmental disorders alter information processing. Here we examine the developmental changes in signal and noise correlation structure of neural activity by analyzing neural recordings of the zebrafish optic tectum evoked by prey-like visual stimuli. We found that si

…dimensions, analogously to how sensory information

…Sensory information about the target and current body state is critical, as is the integration of prior experience represented by prelearned inverse dynamics that generate the associated muscle activity. We propose a generative model that uses a recurrent neural network to predict upper limb muscle activity during various simple and complex everyday movements. By identifying movement primitives within the si

Music is a form of sensory information with diverse preferences observed among individuals. These individual variations in music preferences can be attributed to individual differences in the neural processing of music. However, the specific neural processes responsible for such differences have not been specified, as the limitations of previous experimental designs in distinguishing between inter- and intra-individual preference variations. To address this issue, our study aimed to identify neural signals indicative of individual preference differences using univariate and multivariate analys

…is not congruent with the current sensory information, it creates an internal conflict, potentially leading to a mixed-reality perception that suppresses the solely sensory or memory-driven behaviours. Employing the tet-tag system and optogenetics in transgenic mice, we activated memory ensem

The predictive processing framework conceptualizes perception as co-constructed by sensory information and priors. These priors arise from different sources including long-term and short-term perceptual history. According to predictive processing, psychosis can be explained as a reduced weighting of priors relative to sensory information. This study investigated how short-term priors from different sources are used in perceptual decision-making and how psychosis proneness (PP) modulates the use of these priors.Across two online experiments, 101 healthy participants completed an auditory percep

Understanding how sensory information is represented, processed, and leads to generation of complex behavior is the major goal of systems neuroscience. However, the ability to detect and manipulate such large-scale functional circuits has been hampered by the lack of appropriate tools and methods that allow for parallel recording of neuronal population activity at high spatial and temporal resolutions. We have recently demonstrated near-simultaneous recording from over 1 million neurons distributed across both hemispheres and different layers of the mouse cortex at cellular resolution. At the

…require the temporary maintenance of information. Several competing hypotheses for the neuronal mechanisms underlying persistent activity have been proposed. We have employed data-driven models in conjunction with optogenetic disruptions of neural circuits within memory-guided motor tasks. Our findings revealed a mechanism governed by dynamic attractors, pivotal in sustaining neuronal activity. This mechanism, shaped by time-varying inputs reflecting temporal predictions, is instrumenta

…to explain how the brain processes sensory information by making predictions about the environment and minimizing prediction errors. It can also be used to explain some of the key symptoms of psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. In my talk, I will provide an overview of our progress in this endeavor.

…computational reconstruction of sensory information, and immersive ‘holographic’ virtual reality (VR) for animals, experi

Visual working memory (WM) is the cognitive function that temporarily keeps sensory information online. There is a debate on WM's limited ability: holding a fixed small amount of items or a limited resource allocated to all items stored. The current study tries to solve the debate by model comparison, involving the Mixture Model, Variable Precision Model, and All-guessing models. Furthermore, though multiple subregions of the human brain cortex coordinate to support the WM functions, their distinct contributions are under debate. By comparing WM performance with transcranial magnetic stimulati

…neural networks learn and process sensory information.

To efficiently process sensory information, the brain relies on statistical regularities in the input. While generally improving the reliability of sensory estimates, this strategy also induces perceptual illusions that help reveal the underlying computational principles. Focusing on auditory and visual perception, in my talk I will describe how the brain exploits statistical regularities within and across the senses for the perception space, time and multisensory integration. In particular, I will show how results from a series of psychophysical experiments can be interpreted in the light of

…subjective ‘qualitative’ sensory information, in the sense that it can easily assess how exactly similar a sensory signal is to all other possible sensory signals. This information is subjective in the sense that it concerns how the different stimuli can be distinguished by the agent itself, rather than how physically similar they are. For this to happen, sensory coding needs to satisfy sparsity

Animals produce behavior by responding to a mixture of cues that arise both externally (sensory) and internally (neural dynamics and states). These cues are continuously produced and can be combined in different ways depending on the needs of the animal. However, the integration of these external and internal cues remains difficult to understand in natural behaviors. To address this gap, we have developed an unsupervised method to identify internal states from behavioral data, and have applied it to the study of a dynamic social interaction. During courtship, Drosophila melanogaster males patt

It has generally been presumed that sensory information encoded by a nervous system should be as accurate as its biological limitations allow. However, perhaps counter intuitively, accurate representations of sensory signals do not necessarily maximize the organism’s chances of survival. We show that neural codes that maximize reward expectation—and not accurate sensory representations—account for retinal responses in insects, and retinotopically-specific adaptive codes in humans. Thus, our results provide evidence that fitness-maximizing rules imposed by the environment are applied at the ear

…paradigm where mice learn to associate sensory information (two different odors) to motor outputs (lick vs no-lick) under head-fixation. We combined this with two-photon calcium imaging, which can monitor the activity of a microcircuit of many tens of neurons simultaneously from a small area of the

…are believed to be used in encoding sensory information into spike trains of cortical neurons. Temporal and rate codes co-exist in the spike train and such multiplexed neural code-carrying spike trains have been shown to be spatially synchronized in multiple neurons across different cortical layers during sensory information processing. Inhibition is suggested to promote such synchronization, but it is unclear whether distinct subtypes of interneurons make different contributions in

It has long been known that when viewing a set of images, we misjudge individual elements as being closer to the mean than they are (Hollingworth, 1910) and recall seeing the (absent) set mean (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott (1995). Recent studies found that viewing sets of images, simultaneously or sequentially, leads to perception of set statistics (mean, range) with poor memory for individual elements. Ensemble perception was found for sets of simple images (e.g. circles varying in size or brightness; lines of varying orientation), complex objects (e.g. faces of varying emotion), as well

…In the wild, rodents combine odor information with an internal spatial representation of the environment for foraging and navigation. What are the neural circuits in the brain that implement these behaviours? My research addresses this question by examining the synaptic circuits and neural population activity in the olfactory cortex to understand the integration of olfactory and spatial information. Primary olfactory (piriform) cortex (PCx) has long been recognized as a highly associative