title: Dynamics of excitatory and inhibitory networks are differentially altered by selective attention.
abstract: Inhibition and excitation form two fundamental modes of neuronal interaction, yet we understand relatively little about their distinct roles in service of perceptual and cognitive processes. We developed a multidimensional waveform analysis to identify fast-spiking (putative inhibitory) and regular-spiking (putative excitatory) neurons in vivo and used this method to analyze how attention affects these two cell classes in visual area V4 of the extrastriate cortex of rhesus macaques. We found that putative inhibitory neurons had both greater increases in firing rate and decreases in correlated variability with attention compared with putative excitatory neurons. Moreover, the time course of attention effects for putative inhibitory neurons more closely tracked the temporal statistics of target probability in our task. Finally, the session-to-session variability in a behavioral measure of attention covaried with the magnitude of this effect. Together, these results suggest that selective targeting of inhibitory neurons and networks is a critical mechanism for attentional modulation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ophthalmology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
authors.forename: Adam C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Snyder
authors.affiliation: Department of Ophthalmology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Morais
authors.affiliation: Department of Ophthalmology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Fox Center for Vision Restoration, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and smithma@pitt.edu.
authors.forename: Matthew A
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-1192-9942
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Smith
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials; D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D004567:Electrodes, Implanted; D008253:Macaca mulatta; D008297:Male; D009433:Neural Inhibition / Q000502:physiology*; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology
keywords: V4; attention; correlated variability; inhibition; vision