Wujie Zhang
Columbia University

Coupling between one-dimensional networks reconciles conflicting dynamics in LIP and reveals its recurrent circuitry

Wednesday 19th of August 2015 at 12:00pm
560 Evans

The primate lateral intraparietal area (LIP) is involved in a range of sensorimotor and cognitive processes; however, little is known about its internal circuitry. We found that during two versions of a delayed-saccade task, beneath similar population average firing patterns across time lie radically different network dynamics. When neurons are not influenced by stimuli outside their receptive fields (RFs), dynamics of the high-dimensional LIP network lie predominantly in one multi-neuronal dimension, as predicted by an earlier model. However, when activity is suppressed by stimuli outside the RF, LIP dynamics markedly violate one-dimensional dynamics. The conflicting results can be reconciled if two LIP local networks, each dominated by a single multi-neuronal activity pattern, are mutually suppressively coupled. These results demonstrate the low dimensionality of LIP local dynamics, and suggest active involvement of LIP recurrent circuitry in surround suppression and more generally in processing attentional and movement priority and other related functions.

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