TY - JOUR
T1 - Dynamics of heading and choice-related signals in the parieto-insular vestibular cortex of macaque monkeys
AU - Chen, Aihua
AU - Zeng, Fu
AU - DeAngelis, Gregory C.
AU - Angelaki, Dora E.
N1 - Funding Information:
Received Aug. 29, 2020; revised Jan. 20, 2021; accepted Feb. 17, 2021. Author contributions: G.C.D. and D.E.A. designed research; A.C. performed research; A.C. contributed unpublished reagents/analytic tools; A.C. and F.Z. analyzed data; A.C., G.C.D., and D.E.A. wrote the paper. D.E.A. was supported by the National Institutes of Health grant Grant R01 DC014678. G.C.D. was supported by the National Institutes of Health grant Grant R01 EY016178. We thank A. Turner and E. White for monkey care and training as well as Jose A. Fernandez-Leon for work on an early version of the partial correlation analysis and manuscript preparation. The authors declare no competing financial interests. Correspondence should be addressed to Dora E. Angelaki at da93@nyu.edu. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2275-20.2021 Copyright © 2021 the authors
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Society for Neuroscience. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/4/7
Y1 - 2021/4/7
N2 - Perceptual decision-making is increasingly being understood to involve an interaction between bottom-up sensory-driven signals and top-down choice-driven signals, but how these signals interact to mediate perception is not well understood. The parieto-insular vestibular cortex (PIVC) is an area with prominent vestibular responsiveness, and previous work has shown that inactivating PIVC impairs vestibular heading judgments. To investigate the nature of PIVC s contribution to heading perception, we recorded extracellularly from PIVC neurons in two male rhesus macaques during a heading discrimination task, and compared findings with data from previous studies of dorsal medial superior temporal (MSTd) and ventral intraparietal (VIP) areas using identical stimuli. By computing partial correlations between neural responses, heading, and choice, we find that PIVC activity reflects a dynamically changing combination of sensory and choice signals. In addition, the sensory and choice signals are more balanced in PIVC, in contrast to the sensory dominance in MSTd and choice dominance in VIP. Interestingly, heading and choice signals in PIVC are negatively correlated during the middle portion of the stimulus epoch, reflecting a mismatch in the polarity of heading and choice signals. We anticipate that these results will help unravel the mechanisms of interaction between bottom-up sensory signals and top-down choice signals in perceptual decision-making, leading to more comprehensive models of self-motion perception.
AB - Perceptual decision-making is increasingly being understood to involve an interaction between bottom-up sensory-driven signals and top-down choice-driven signals, but how these signals interact to mediate perception is not well understood. The parieto-insular vestibular cortex (PIVC) is an area with prominent vestibular responsiveness, and previous work has shown that inactivating PIVC impairs vestibular heading judgments. To investigate the nature of PIVC s contribution to heading perception, we recorded extracellularly from PIVC neurons in two male rhesus macaques during a heading discrimination task, and compared findings with data from previous studies of dorsal medial superior temporal (MSTd) and ventral intraparietal (VIP) areas using identical stimuli. By computing partial correlations between neural responses, heading, and choice, we find that PIVC activity reflects a dynamically changing combination of sensory and choice signals. In addition, the sensory and choice signals are more balanced in PIVC, in contrast to the sensory dominance in MSTd and choice dominance in VIP. Interestingly, heading and choice signals in PIVC are negatively correlated during the middle portion of the stimulus epoch, reflecting a mismatch in the polarity of heading and choice signals. We anticipate that these results will help unravel the mechanisms of interaction between bottom-up sensory signals and top-down choice signals in perceptual decision-making, leading to more comprehensive models of self-motion perception.
KW - Bottom-up
KW - Choice
KW - PIVC
KW - Partial correlation
KW - Sensory
KW - Top-down
KW - Vestibule, Labyrinth/diagnostic imaging
KW - Head Movements/physiology
KW - Magnetic Resonance Imaging/methods
KW - Male
KW - Macaca mulatta
KW - Parietal Lobe/diagnostic imaging
KW - Choice Behavior/physiology
KW - Animals
KW - Cerebral Cortex/diagnostic imaging
KW - Photic Stimulation/methods
KW - Somatosensory Cortex/diagnostic imaging
KW - Discrimination Learning/physiology
KW - Motion Perception/physiology
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U2 - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2275-20.2021
DO - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2275-20.2021
M3 - Article
C2 - 33622780
AN - SCOPUS:85104047911
SN - 0270-6474
VL - 41
SP - 3254
EP - 3265
JO - Journal of Neuroscience
JF - Journal of Neuroscience
IS - 14
ER -