title: High baseline activity in inferior temporal cortex improves neural and behavioral discriminability during visual categorization.
abstract: Spontaneous firing is a ubiquitous property of neural activity in the brain. Recent literature suggests that this baseline activity plays a key role in perception. However, it is not known how the baseline activity contributes to neural coding and behavior. Here, by recording from the single neurons in the inferior temporal cortex of monkeys performing a visual categorization task, we thoroughly explored the relationship between baseline activity, the evoked response, and behavior. Specifically we found that a low-frequency (<8 Hz) oscillation in the spike train, prior and phase-locked to the stimulus onset, was correlated with increased gamma power and neuronal baseline activity. This enhancement of the baseline activity was then followed by an increase in the neural selectivity and the response reliability and eventually a higher behavioral performance.
authors.affiliation: School of Cognitive Sciences, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM) Tehran, Iran ; Research Center for Brain and Cognition, School of Medicine, University of Shahid Beheshti Tehran, Iran ; Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Neurobiology, Stanford University School of Medicine Stanford, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Nazli
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Emadi
authors.affiliation: McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Reza
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Rajimehr
authors.affiliation: School of Cognitive Sciences, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM) Tehran, Iran ; Research Center for Brain and Cognition, School of Medicine, University of Shahid Beheshti Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Hossein
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Esteky
keywords: baseline activity; behavioral performance; decision making; inferior temporal cortex; macaque monkey; object recognition; oscillation