title: Signaling of the strongest stimulus in the owl optic tectum.
abstract: Essential to the selection of the next target for gaze or attention is the ability to compare the strengths of multiple competing stimuli (bottom-up information) and to signal the strongest one. Although the optic tectum (OT) has been causally implicated in stimulus selection, how it computes the strongest stimulus is unknown. Here, we demonstrate that OT neurons in the barn owl systematically encode the relative strengths of simultaneously occurring stimuli independently of sensory modality. Moreover, special "switch-like" responses of a subset of neurons abruptly increase when the stimulus inside their receptive field becomes the strongest one. Such responses are not predicted by responses to single stimuli and, indeed, are eliminated in the absence of competitive interactions. We demonstrate that this sensory transformation substantially boosts the representation of the strongest stimulus by creating a binary discrimination signal, thereby setting the stage for potential winner-take-all target selection for gaze and attention.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA. shreesh@stanford.edu
authors.forename: Shreesh P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Mysore
authors.forename: Ali
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Asadollahi
authors.forename: Eric I
authors.initials: EI
authors.lastname: Knudsen
mesh_terms: D018712:Analgesics, Non-Narcotic / Q000494:pharmacology; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology*; D001703:Biophysics; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D009609:Nitrous Oxide / Q000494:pharmacology; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology*; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D020305:Strigiformes; D013477:Superior Colliculi / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D018712:Analgesics, Non-Narcotic; D009609:Nitrous Oxide