title: The adaptive trade-off between detection and discrimination in cortical representations and behavior.
abstract: It has long been posited that detectability of sensory inputs can be sacrificed in favor of improved discriminability and that sensory adaptation may mediate this trade-off. The extent to which this trade-off exists behaviorally and the complete picture of the underlying neural representations that likely subserve the phenomenon remain unclear. In the rodent vibrissa system, an ideal observer analysis of cortical activity measured using voltage-sensitive dye imaging in anesthetized animals was combined with behavioral detection and discrimination tasks, thalamic recordings from awake animals, and computational modeling to show that spatial discrimination performance was improved following adaptation, but at the expense of the ability to detect weak stimuli. Together, these results provide direct behavioral evidence for the trade-off between detectability and discriminability, that this trade-off can be modulated through bottom-up sensory adaptation, and that these effects correspond to important changes in thalamocortical coding properties.
authors.affiliation: Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, 313 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA.
authors.forename: Douglas R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Ollerenshaw
authors.affiliation: Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, 313 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA.
authors.forename: He J V
authors.initials: HJV
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.affiliation: Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, 313 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA.
authors.forename: Daniel C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Millard
authors.affiliation: Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, 313 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA.
authors.forename: Qi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, 313 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA. Electronic address: garrett.stanley@bme.gatech.edu.
authors.forename: Garrett B
authors.initials: GB
authors.lastname: Stanley
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D000222:Adaptation, Physiological / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D004558:Electric Stimulation; D005260:Female; D011594:Psychometrics; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013788:Thalamus / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D055698:Touch Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014738:Vibrissae / Q000502:physiology*