title: On-line, voluntary control of human temporal lobe neurons.
abstract: Daily life continually confronts us with an exuberance of external, sensory stimuli competing with a rich stream of internal deliberations, plans and ruminations. The brain must select one or more of these for further processing. How this competition is resolved across multiple sensory and cognitive regions is not known; nor is it clear how internal thoughts and attention regulate this competition. Recording from single neurons in patients implanted with intracranial electrodes for clinical reasons, here we demonstrate that humans can regulate the activity of their neurons in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) to alter the outcome of the contest between external images and their internal representation. Subjects looked at a hybrid superposition of two images representing familiar individuals, landmarks, objects or animals and had to enhance one image at the expense of the other, competing one. Simultaneously, the spiking activity of their MTL neurons in different subregions and hemispheres was decoded in real time to control the content of the hybrid. Subjects reliably regulated, often on the first trial, the firing rate of their neurons, increasing the rate of some while simultaneously decreasing the rate of others. They did so by focusing onto one image, which gradually became clearer on the computer screen in front of their eyes, and thereby overriding sensory input. On the basis of the firing of these MTL neurons, the dynamics of the competition between visual images in the subject's mind was visualized on an external display.
authors.affiliation: Computation and Neural Systems, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA. moran@klab.caltech.edu
authors.forename: Moran
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cerf
authors.forename: Nikhil
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Thiruvengadam
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Mormann
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kraskov
authors.forename: Rodrigo Quian
authors.initials: RQ
authors.lastname: Quiroga
authors.forename: Christof
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Koch
authors.forename: Itzhak
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Fried
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D004567:Electrodes, Implanted; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008328:Man-Machine Systems; D008839:Microelectrodes; D019222:Mind-Body Relations, Metaphysical / Q000502:physiology; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000166:cytology* / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors