@article{TEXTUAL,
      recid = {6195},
      author = {Wei, Lai and Mitchell, Autumn O. and Maunsell, John H. R.},
      title = {Increments in visual motion coherence are more readily  detected than decrements},
      journal = {Journal of Vision},
      address = {2023-05-24},
      number = {TEXTUAL},
      abstract = {Understanding the circuits that access and read out  information in the cerebral cortex to guide behavior  remains a challenge for systems-level neuroscience. Recent  optogenetic experiments targeting specific cell classes in  mouse primary visual cortex (V1) have shown that mice are  sensitive to optically-induced increases in V1 spiking but  are relatively insensitive to decreases in neuronal spiking  of similar magnitude and time course. This asymmetry  suggests that the readout of signals from cortex depends  preferentially on increases in spike rate. We investigated  whether humans display a similar asymmetry by measuring  thresholds for detecting changes in the motion coherence of  dynamic random dot stimuli. The middle temporal visual area  (MT) has been shown to play an important role in  discriminating random dot stimuli, and the responses of its  individual neurons to dynamic random dots are well  characterized. Although both increments and decrements in  motion coherence have heterogeneous effects on MT  responses, increments cause on average more increases in  firing rates. Consistent with this, we found that subjects  are more sensitive to increments of random dot motion  coherence than to decrements of coherence. The magnitude of  the difference in detectability was consistent with the  expected difference in neuronal signal-to-noise associated  with MT spike rate increases driven by coherence increments  and decrements. The results add strength to the notion that  the circuit mechanisms that read out cortical signals are  relatively insensitive to decrements in cortical spiking. },
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/6195},
}