Cosyne 2008 Workshops
March 3-4, 2008
Snow Bird, Utah
Workshop Title
The cortical microcircuit and cognitive function
Organizer(s)
Marc Sommer (University of Pittsburgh): masommer@pitt.edu
John Reynolds (Salk Institute): reynolds@salk.edu
Abstract
The rhesus macaque has proven to be a remarkably successful model system for studying the neural mechanisms underlying a range of cognitive functions, including perception, attention, memory and decision making. Decades of research have identified the key brain areas that subserve these functions. Within the visual system alone, more than thirty distinct brain areas have been identified and characterized using a variety of techniques including lesions, microstimulation, reversible inactivation and extracellular recording. The capacity of the macaque to learn to perform complex behavioral tasks has enabled neurobiologists to examine the functions of different brain areas under tight experimental control. Sophisticated computational methods have been developed to quantify task-dependent changes in neuronal response properties and to characterize the relationship between neural responses and behavior.
Despite these considerable successes, research in the macaque has shed comparatively little light on the local microcircuits that mediate the computations that give rise to the changes in neuronal responses that occur with changes in cognitive state. Some notable successes in this direction have been made by developing computational models to account for neurophysiological data, but, almost without exception, neurophysiological studies of the neocortex in the behaving macaque have not sought to distinguish neurons from one another, or to localize neurons according to their position in the laminar circuit. This is a serious shortcoming because cortical neurons differ from one another in critical ways, including their neurochemical properties, patterns of connectivity, laminar distribution, gene expression patterns and developmental origin. Significant progress in understanding the microcircuit-level mechanisms that subserve cognitive functions will come from making these distinctions.
The purpose of this session is to bring neurophysiologists who study cognitive functions in the macaque into contact with researchers working in anesthetized animals and cortical slices, where neuronal identity and laminar position can readily be established. A general aim of the session is to facilitate an exchange of perspectives on how best to advance our understanding of the biological underpinnings of cognitive function. Several specific topics could be the subject for debate and discussion, such as the utility of analyzing action potential waveform shape as a clue to neuron type (excitatory vs. inhibitory classes) and other approaches to distinguishing among cell classes in the awake primate. This exchange of ideas and data will prove very useful to computational neuroscientists who are interested in constructing realistic computational models of cognitive function. It will also be of interest to those who work on cognitive function in the macaque and those who work on microcircuitry in anesthetized animals and in the slice, two communities who have not, to date, interacted sufficiently.
Speakers
| MORNING SESSION | ||
| 8:00-8:10 | Opening Remarks | |
| 8:10-8:40 | John Reynolds | Mapping the microcircuitry of attention: attentional modulation varies across cell classes in visual area V4. |
| 8:45-9:15 | Harvey Swadlow | Antidromic activation, spike duration, and spike-triggered averaging of axonal, synaptic, and dendritic events: Multiple tools for in vivo identification of diverse neocortical cell classes. |
| 9:20-9:50 | Max Snodderley | Parallel and serial operations in primary visual cortex (V1) of alert primates. |
| 9:55-10:25 | Ed Callaway | Fine Scale and Cell Type Specificity of Cortical Circuits |
| 10:30-11:00 | Jose-Manuel Alonso | Task Difficulty Modulates the Activity of Specific Populations of Neurons in Primary Visual Cortex |
| AFTERNOON SESSION | ||
| 4:30-5:00 | Dan Simons | Fast-spike units, feedforward inhibition and thalamocortical response transformations in the somatosensory system. |
| 5:05-5:35 | Gyorgy Buzsaki | Physiological identification of cortical interneurons and principal cells in large-scale extracellular recordings |
| 5:40-6:10 | Elizabeth Torres | Distinct classes of Parietal Reach Region neurons have complementary responses in the planning of automatic vs. novel voluntary reaches. |
| 6:15-6:45 | David McCormick | Recurrent cortical networks and the control of neuronal responsiveness. |
| 6:50-7:20 | Marc Sommer | Division of labor between frontal eye field neurons during spatial visual processing. |
| 7:20-7:30 | Conclusions/Discussion |
