Distributed representation of visual objects by single neurons in the human brain

It remains unclear how single neurons in the human brain represent whole-object visual stimuli. While recordings in both human and nonhuman primates have shown distributed representations of objects (many neurons encoding multiple objects), recordings of single neurons in the human medial temporal l...

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Published inThe Journal of neuroscience Vol. 35; no. 13; pp. 5180 - 5186
Main Authors Valdez, André B, Papesh, Megan H, Treiman, David M, Smith, Kris A, Goldinger, Stephen D, Steinmetz, Peter N
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Society for Neuroscience 01.04.2015
Subjects
Action Potentials - physiology
Adult
Amygdala - cytology
Amygdala - physiology
Female
Hippocampus - cytology
Hippocampus - physiology
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Models, Neurological
Neurons - physiology
Photic Stimulation
Visual Perception - physiology
Young Adult
medial temporal lobe
object representation
distributed representation
human single neuron
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Summary:It remains unclear how single neurons in the human brain represent whole-object visual stimuli. While recordings in both human and nonhuman primates have shown distributed representations of objects (many neurons encoding multiple objects), recordings of single neurons in the human medial temporal lobe, taken as subjects' discriminated objects during multiple presentations, have shown gnostic representations (single neurons encoding one object). Because some studies suggest that repeated viewing may enhance neural selectivity for objects, we had human subjects discriminate objects in a single, more naturalistic viewing session. We found that, across 432 well isolated neurons recorded in the hippocampus and amygdala, the average fraction of objects encoded was 26%. We also found that more neurons encoded several objects versus only one object in the hippocampus (28 vs 18%, p < 0.001) and in the amygdala (30 vs 19%, p < 0.001). Thus, during realistic viewing experiences, typical neurons in the human medial temporal lobe code for a considerable range of objects, across multiple semantic categories.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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Author contributions: M.H.P., S.D.G., and P.N.S. designed research; A.B.V., M.H.P., D.M.T., K.A.S., S.D.G., and P.N.S. performed research; P.N.S. contributed unpublished reagents/analytic tools; A.B.V. and P.N.S. analyzed data; A.B.V. and P.N.S. wrote the paper.
A.B.V. and P.N.S. contributed equally to this work.
ISSN:0270-6474
1529-2401
DOI:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1958-14.2015