Laminar microcircuitry of visual cortex producing attention-associated electric fields
- Vanderbilt University, United States
- York University, Canada
Abstract
Cognitive operations are widely studied by measuring electric fields through EEG and ECoG. However, despite their widespread use, the neural circuitry giving rise to these signals remains unknown because the functional architecture of cortical columns producing attention-associated electric fields has not been explored. Here we detail the laminar cortical circuitry underlying an attention-associated electric field measured over posterior regions of the brain in humans and monkeys. First, we identified visual cortical area V4 as one plausible contributor to this attention-associated electric field through inverse modeling of cranial EEG in macaque monkeys performing a visual attention task. Next, we performed laminar neurophysiological recordings on the prelunate gyrus and identified the electric-field-producing dipoles as synaptic activity in distinct cortical layers of area V4. Specifically, activation in the extragranular layers of cortex resulted in the generation of the attention-associated dipole. Feature selectivity of a given cortical column determined the overall contribution to this electric field. Columns selective for the attended feature contributed more to the electric field than columns selective for a different feature. Lastly, the laminar profile of synaptic activity generated by V4 was sufficient to produce an attention-associated signal measurable outside of the column. These findings suggest that the top-down recipient cortical layers produce an attention-associated electric field that can be measured extracortically with the relative contribution of each column depending upon the underlying functional architecture.
Data availability
Data supporting the findings documented in this study are freely available online through Dryad at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.djh9w0w15.
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Data from: Laminar microcircuitry of visual cortex producing attention-associated electric fieldsDryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.djh9w0w15.
Article and author information
Author details
Jacob A Westerberg
Funding
National Eye Institute (F31EY031293)
- Jacob A Westerberg
National Eye Institute (P30EY008126)
- Alexander Maier
- Geoffrey F Woodman
- Jeffrey D Schall
National Eye Institute (R01EY019882)
- Geoffrey F Woodman
- Jeffrey D Schall
National Eye Institute (R01EY008890)
- Jeffrey D Schall
National Eye Institute (R01EY027402)
- Alexander Maier
Office of the Director (S10OD021771)
- Alexander Maier
- Geoffrey F Woodman
- Jeffrey D Schall
National Eye Institute (T32EY007135)
- Jacob A Westerberg
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: Procedures were in accordance with National Institutes of Health Guidelines, Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, and approved by the Vanderbilt Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (Protocol M1700067) following United States Department of Agriculture and Public Health Services policies.
Copyright
© 2022, Westerberg et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Laminar microcircuitry of visual cortex producing attention-associated electric fields
eLife 11:e72139.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.72139
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