title: Spatial Attention Reduces Burstiness in Macaque Visual Cortical Area MST.
abstract: Visual attention modulates the firing rate of neurons in many primate cortical areas. In V4, a cortical area in the ventral visual pathway, spatial attention has also been shown to reduce the tendency of neurons to fire closely separated spikes (burstiness). A recent model proposes that a single mechanism accounts for both the firing rate enhancement and the burstiness reduction in V4, but this has not been empirically tested. It is also unclear if the burstiness reduction by spatial attention is found in other visual areas and for other attentional types. We therefore recorded from single neurons in the medial superior temporal area (MST), a key motion-processing area along the dorsal visual pathway, of two rhesus monkeys while they performed a task engaging both spatial and feature-based attention. We show that in MST, spatial attention is associated with a clear reduction in burstiness that is independent of the concurrent enhancement of firing rate. In contrast, feature-based attention enhances firing rate but is not associated with a significant reduction in burstiness. These results establish burstiness reduction as a widespread effect of spatial attention. They also suggest that in contrast to the recently proposed model, the effects of spatial attention on burstiness and firing rate emerge from different mechanisms.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, German Primate Center, Goettingen 37077, Germany.
authors.forename: Cheng
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xue
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, German Primate Center, Goettingen 37077, Germany.|Experimental Neurobiology, National Institute of Mental Health, Klecany 25067, Czech Republic.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kaping
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, German Primate Center, Goettingen 37077, Germany.|Centre of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Allahabad, Allahabad 211001, UP, India.
authors.forename: Sonia Baloni
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Ray
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, German Primate Center, Goettingen 37077, Germany.
authors.forename: B Suresh
authors.initials: BS
authors.lastname: Krishna
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, German Primate Center, Goettingen 37077, Germany.|Faculty of Biology and Psychology, Goettingen University, Goettingen 37073, Germany.|Leibniz Science Campus Primate Cognition, Goettingen 37073, Germany.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Treue
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001683:Biological Clocks / Q000502:physiology*; D058256:Brain Waves / Q000502:physiology*; D008253:Macaca mulatta; D008297:Male; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: attention; burstiness; monkey neurophysiology; visual cortex