Human single neuron activity precedes emergence of conscious perception
Abstract
Identifying the neuronal basis of spontaneous changes in conscious experience in the absence of changes in the external environment is a major challenge. Binocular rivalry, in which two stationary monocular images lead to continuously changing perception, provides a unique opportunity to address this issue. We studied the activity of human single neurons in the medial temporal and frontal lobes while patients were engaged in binocular rivalry. Here we report that internal changes in the content of perception are signaled by very early (~-2000 ms) nonselective medial frontal activity, followed by selective activity of medial temporal lobe neurons that precedes the perceptual change by ~1000 ms. Such early activations are not found for externally driven perceptual changes. These results suggest that a medial fronto-temporal network may be involved in the preconscious internal generation of perceptual transitions.
Additional Information
© The Author(s) 2018. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Received: 24 August 2017; Accepted: 06 March 2018; Published: 25 May 2018. Data availability: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. We thank the patients for their participation; Rafi Malach, Yuval Nir, Tal Golan, Tomer Livne, Dan Biderman, and Natalie Biderman for discussions; Amit Marmelshtein for code; Michelle Tran, Deena Pourshaban, and Mariana Holliday for assistance with data acquisition; Eric Behnke and Tony Fields for technical assistance; Brooke Salaz for administrative help. C.K. thanks the Allen Institute founder, Paul G. Allen, for his vision, encouragement, and support. This work was supported by grants from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS no. R01NS033221 and R01NS084017) and Mathers foundation, fellowships from the Human Frontiers Research Program (HFSP), European Union's Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA; under grant agreement no 659759 and 659765), the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the Israel National Postdoctoral Award Program for Advancing Women in Science, and the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science program. Author Contributions: H.G.-S., C.K., and I.F. designed the experiment. I.F. performed the surgeries. M.R.H. contributed the pre-screening presentation and analysis code. H.G.-S. implemented the paradigm and collected the data. H.G.-S. and L.M. analyzed the data. H.G.-S., L.M., and I.F. wrote the manuscript. H.G.-S., L.M., C.K. and I.F. discussed the results and commented on the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. The authors declare no competing interests.Attached Files
Published - s41467-018-03749-0.pdf
Supplemental Material - 41467_2018_3749_MOESM1_ESM.pdf
Supplemental Material - 41467_2018_3749_MOESM2_ESM.pdf
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Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC5970215
- Eprint ID
- 86772
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20180604-075951166
- R01NS033221
- NIH
- R01NS084017
- NIH
- Mathers Foundation
- Human Frontier Science Program
- Marie Curie Fellowship
- 659759
- European Research Council (ERC)
- 659765
- European Research Council (ERC)
- European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO)
- Israel National Postdoctoral Award Program for Advancing Women in Science
- L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Program
- Created
-
2018-06-04Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-15Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Koch Laboratory (KLAB)