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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on May 10, 2007
Cerebral Cortex 2008 18(1):200-209; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhm046
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Transient Cortical Excitation at the Onset of Visual Fixation

Csaba Rajkai1,2, Peter Lakatos1,2, Chi-Ming Chen1, Zsuzsa Pincze2, Gyorgy Karmos2 and Charles E. Schroeder1,3

1 Cognitive Neuroscience and Schizophrenia Program, Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY 10962, USA, 2 Research Institute for Psychology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest 1394, Hungary, 3 Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY 10032, USA

Address correspondence to Charles E. Schroeder, PhD, Cognitive Neuroscience and Schizophrenia Program, Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, 140 Old Orangeburg Road, Orangeburg, NY 10962, USA. Email: schrod{at}nki.rfmh.org.

Primates actively examine the visual world by rapidly shifting gaze (fixation) over the elements in a scene. Despite this fact, we typically study vision by presenting stimuli with gaze held constant. To better understand the dynamics of natural vision, we examined how the onset of visual fixation affects ongoing neuronal activity in the absence of visual stimulation. We used multiunit activity and current source density measurements to index neuronal firing patterns and underlying synaptic processes in macaque V1. Initial averaging of neural activity synchronized to the onset of fixation suggested that a brief period of cortical excitation follows each fixation. Subsequent single-trial analyses revealed that 1) neuronal oscillation phase transits from random to a highly organized state just after the fixation onset, 2) this phase concentration is accompanied by increased spectral power in several frequency bands, and 3) visual response amplitude is enhanced at the specific oscillatory phase associated with fixation. We hypothesize that nonvisual inputs are used by the brain to increase cortical excitability at fixation onset, thus "priming" the system for new visual inputs generated at fixation. Despite remaining mechanistic questions, it appears that analysis of fixation-related responses may be useful in studying natural vision.

Key Words: current source density • excitability • fixation • macaque • multiunit activity • neuronal oscillation phase • visual cortex


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