Rate-distortion theory of neural coding and its implications for working memory
- Harvard University, United States
Abstract
Rate-distortion theory provides a powerful framework for understanding the nature of human memory by formalizing the relationship between information rate (the average number of bits per stimulus transmitted across the memory channel) and distortion (the cost of memory errors). Here we show how this abstract computational-level framework can be realized by a model of neural population coding. The model reproduces key regularities of visual working memory, including some that were not previously explained by population coding models. We verify a novel prediction of the model by reanalyzing recordings of monkey prefrontal neurons during an oculomotor delayed response task.
Data availability
The current manuscript is a computational study, so no data have been generated for this manuscript. Source code can be found at https://github.com/amvjakob/wm-rate-distortion. The previously published datasets are available upon request from the corresponding authors of the published papers, Souza and Oberauer (2015), Daniel Bliss at al. (2017), Panichello et al. (2019). A minimally processed dataset from Barbosa et al. (2020) is available online ((https://github.com/comptelab/interplayPFC), with the raw data available upon request from the corresponding author of the published paper (raw monkey data available upon request to Christos Constantinidis cconstan@wakehealth.edu, and raw EEG data available upon request to Heike Stein, heike.c.stein@gmail.com). There are no specific application or approval processes involved in requesting these datasets.
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Interplay between persistent activity and activity-silent dynamics in the prefrontal cortex underlies serial biases in working memoryhttps://github.com/comptelab/interplayPFC.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Fondation Bertarelli (Bertarelli Fellowship)
- Anthony MV Jakob
National Science Foundation (NSF STC award,CCF-1231216)
- Samuel J Gershman
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2023, Jakob & Gershman
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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Rate-distortion theory of neural coding and its implications for working memory
eLife 12:e79450.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.79450
Further reading
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- Neuroscience
Hungry animals consistently show a desire to obtain food. Even a brief sensory detection of food can trigger bursts of physiological and behavioral changes. However, the underlying mechanisms by which the sensation of food triggers the acute behavioral response remain elusive. We have previously shown in Drosophila that hunger drives a preference for low temperature. Because Drosophila is a small ectotherm, a preference for low temperature implies a low body temperature and a low metabolic rate. Here, we show that taste-sensing triggers a switch from a low to a high temperature preference in hungry flies. We show that taste stimulation by artificial sweeteners or optogenetics triggers an acute warm preference, but is not sufficient to reach the fed state. Instead, nutrient intake is required to reach the fed state. The data suggest that starvation recovery is controlled by two components: taste-evoked and nutrient-induced warm preferences, and that taste and nutrient quality play distinct roles in starvation recovery. Animals are motivated to eat based on time of day or hunger. We found that clock genes and hunger signals profoundly control the taste-evoked warm preferences. Thus, our data suggest that the taste-evoked response is one of the critical layers of regulatory mechanisms representing internal energy homeostasis and metabolism.
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- Medicine
- Neuroscience
Background:
Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a global health problem with limited therapeutic options. The biochemical mechanisms that lead to this disorder are not yet fully understood, and in this respect, metabolomics represents a promising approach to decipher metabolic events related to AUD. The plasma metabolome contains a plethora of bioactive molecules that reflects the functional changes in host metabolism but also the impact of the gut microbiome and nutritional habits.
Methods:
In this study, we investigated the impact of severe AUD (sAUD), and of a 3-week period of alcohol abstinence, on the blood metabolome (non-targeted LC-MS metabolomics analysis) in 96 sAUD patients hospitalized for alcohol withdrawal.
Results:
We found that the plasma levels of different lipids ((lyso)phosphatidylcholines, long-chain fatty acids), short-chain fatty acids (i.e. 3-hydroxyvaleric acid) and bile acids were altered in sAUD patients. In addition, several microbial metabolites, including indole-3-propionic acid, p-cresol sulfate, hippuric acid, pyrocatechol sulfate, and metabolites belonging to xanthine class (paraxanthine, theobromine and theophylline) were sensitive to alcohol exposure and alcohol withdrawal. 3-Hydroxyvaleric acid, caffeine metabolites (theobromine, paraxanthine, and theophylline) and microbial metabolites (hippuric acid and pyrocatechol sulfate) were correlated with anxiety, depression and alcohol craving. Metabolomics analysis in postmortem samples of frontal cortex and cerebrospinal fluid of those consuming a high level of alcohol revealed that those metabolites can be found also in brain tissue.
Conclusions:
Our data allow the identification of neuroactive metabolites, from interactions between food components and microbiota, which may represent new targets arising in the management of neuropsychiatric diseases such as sAUD.
Funding:
Gut2Behave project was initiated from ERA-NET NEURON network (Joint Transnational Call 2019) and was financed by Academy of Finland, French National Research Agency (ANR-19-NEUR-0003-03) and the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FRS-FNRS; PINT-MULTI R.8013.19, Belgium). Metabolomics analysis of the TSDS samples was supported by grant from the Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies.
