Topic: visual cortical hierarchy

Higher brain regions are thought to use the computational advantages of sitting closer to a critical point to support more complex cognitive functions. Finding evidence for this hypothesis from neural data is challenging, requiring robust and accurate measures of the distance to criticality (DTC). Many existing metrics of criticality---such as increased signal variance and slower timescales---are derived from analytically tractable systems with fixed or low-amplitude dynamical noise. However, the brain is highly stochastic, with noise levels that can vary between regions, recordings, or indivi

Most brain functions rely on constant interactions among specialized brain areas. In primates, synchronized oscillations in distinct frequency bands have been suggested to facilitate the routing of feedforward and feedback signals across hierarchically organized visual areas. However, the underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown. Previous studies in mice identified two distinct visually induced gamma rhythms: a luminance-dependent narrowband high gamma rhythm (~60Hz) in both V1 and higher visual areas and a context-dependent low gamma rhythm (~30Hz) in V1. Our analysis of the open-source A