Stimulus Onset Quenches Neural Variability: a Widespread Cortical Phenomenon

Overview

Journal Nat Neurosci

Date 2010 Feb 23

PMID 20173745

Citations 515

Authors

Mark M Churchland

Byron M Yu

John P Cunningham

Leo P Sugrue

Marlene R Cohen

Greg S Corrado

William T Newsome

Andrew M Clark

Paymon Hosseini

Benjamin B Scott

David C Bradley

Matthew A Smith

Adam Kohn

J Anthony Movshon

Katherine M Armstrong

Tirin Moore

Steve W Chang

Lawrence H Snyder

Stephen G Lisberger

Nicholas J Priebe

Ian M Finn

David Ferster

Stephen I Ryu

Gopal Santhanam

Maneesh Sahani

Krishna V Shenoy

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Neural responses are typically characterized by computing the mean firing rate, but response variability can exist across trials. Many studies have examined the effect of a stimulus on the mean response, but few have examined the effect on response variability. We measured neural variability in 13 extracellularly recorded datasets and one intracellularly recorded dataset from seven areas spanning the four cortical lobes in monkeys and cats. In every case, stimulus onset caused a decline in neural variability. This occurred even when the stimulus produced little change in mean firing rate. The variability decline was observed in membrane potential recordings, in the spiking of individual neurons and in correlated spiking variability measured with implanted 96-electrode arrays. The variability decline was observed for all stimuli tested, regardless of whether the animal was awake, behaving or anaesthetized. This widespread variability decline suggests a rather general property of cortex, that its state is stabilized by an input.

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