A hierarchy of timescales explains distinct effects of local inhibition of primary visual cortex and frontal eye fields

Within the primate visual system, areas at lower levels of the cortical hierarchy process basic visual features, whereas those at higher levels, such as the frontal eye fields (FEF), are thought to modulate sensory processes via feedback connections. Despite these functional exchanges during percept...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:eLife 2016-09, Vol.5
Main Authors: Cocchi, Luca, Sale, Martin V, L Gollo, Leonardo, Bell, Peter T, Nguyen, Vinh T, Zalesky, Andrew, Breakspear, Michael, Mattingley, Jason B
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Computational Biology
Computational neuroscience
connectivity
Cortex (frontal)
Cortex (somatosensory)
cortical hierarchy
Eye
Feedback
Female
Frontal Lobe - physiology
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
Healthy Volunteers
Humans
Male
modelling
Models, Neurological
Neural circuitry
Neural Inhibition
Neural networks
Neuroimaging
Neuroscience
Physiological aspects
Simulation
temporal hierarchy
Time Factors
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
Visual cortex
Visual Cortex - physiology
Visual stimuli
Visual system
Young Adult
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Summary:Within the primate visual system, areas at lower levels of the cortical hierarchy process basic visual features, whereas those at higher levels, such as the frontal eye fields (FEF), are thought to modulate sensory processes via feedback connections. Despite these functional exchanges during perception, there is little shared activity between early and late visual regions at rest. How interactions emerge between regions encompassing distinct levels of the visual hierarchy remains unknown. Here we combined neuroimaging, non-invasive cortical stimulation and computational modelling to characterize changes in functional interactions across widespread neural networks before and after local inhibition of primary visual cortex or FEF. We found that stimulation of early visual cortex selectively increased feedforward interactions with FEF and extrastriate visual areas, whereas identical stimulation of the FEF decreased feedback interactions with early visual areas. Computational modelling suggests that these opposing effects reflect a fast-slow timescale hierarchy from sensory to association areas.
ISSN:2050-084X
2050-084X
DOI:10.7554/elife.15252