Sensory Systems Neuroscientists Face One Fundamental Puzzle on Their Desks: How Primary Sensory Cortex Balances the Weights on Extrinsic and Intrinsic Sources of Information.

摘要

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and spectroscopy (fMRS), our studies conducted a series of experiments with aims of revealing the architecture of functional connectivity among local gray-matter tissues within V1 and the mechanisms of task-dependent top-down modulations of V1. We confirmed that (1) fMRS measurements in human a 3T MRI scanner are sensitive enough to detect task-driven attentional modulation in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and that (2) Noise correlations are relatively high for the voxel pairs whose RFs fall upon the same polar angle axis or the same eccentricity axis. Currently, encouraged by these positive pilot results, we are planning to conduct further experiments, wherein Cho signals in V1 and the basal forebrain area were measured while top-down factors such as decision uncertainty are manipulated as an independent variable.