Efficient sensory cortical coding optimizes pursuit eye movements.
In the natural world, the statistics of sensory stimuli fluctuate across a wide range. In theory, the brain could maximize information recovery if sensory neurons adaptively rescale their sensitivity to the current range of inputs. Such adaptive coding has been observed in a variety of systems, but the premise that adaptation optimizes behaviour has not been tested. Here we show that adaptation in cortical sensory neurons maximizes information about visual motion in pursuit eye movements guided by that cortical activity. We find that gain adaptation drives a rapid (<100 ms) recovery of information after shifts in motion variance, because the neurons and behaviour rescale their sensitivity to motion fluctuations. Both neurons and pursuit rapidly adopt a response gain that maximizes motion information and minimizes tracking errors. Thus, efficient sensory coding is not simply an ideal standard but a description of real sensory computation that manifests in improved behavioural performance.
Department of Neurobiology, The University of Chicago, 947 East 58th Street, P415 MC0928, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA.
Bing
B
Liu
Department of Neurobiology, The University of Chicago, 947 East 58th Street, P415 MC0928, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA.
Matthew V
0000-0002-2506-4495
MV
Macellaio
Department of Neurobiology, The University of Chicago, 947 East 58th Street, P415 MC0928, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA.|Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA.
Leslie C
LC
Osborne
D000222:Adaptation, Physiological; D000818:Animals; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology*; D008253:Macaca mulatta; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011984:Sensory Receptor Cells; D013003:Somatosensory Cortex / Q000502:physiology*