TY - JOUR
T1 - Dissociation of LFP power and tuning in the frontal cortex during memory
AU - Holmes, Charles D.
AU - Papadimitriou, Charalampos
AU - Snyder, Lawrence H.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 the authors.
PY - 2018/9/19
Y1 - 2018/9/19
N2 - Working memory, the ability to maintain and manipulate information in the brain, is critical for cognition. During the memory period of spatial memory tasks, neurons in the prefrontal cortex code for memorized locations via persistent, spatially tuned increases in activity. Local field potentials (LFPs) are understood to reflect summed synaptic activity of local neuron populations and may offer a window into network-level processing. We recorded LFPs from areas 8A and 9/46 while two male cynomolgus macaques (Macaca fascicularis) performed a long duration (5.1–15.6 s) memory-guided saccade task. Greater than ~16 Hz, LFP power was contralaterally tuned throughout the memory period. Yet power for both contralateral and ipsilateral targets fell gradually after the first second of the memory period, dropping below baseline after a few seconds. Our results dissociate absolute LFP power from mnemonic tuning and are consistent with modeling work that suggests that decreasing synchronization within a network may improve the stability of memory coding.
AB - Working memory, the ability to maintain and manipulate information in the brain, is critical for cognition. During the memory period of spatial memory tasks, neurons in the prefrontal cortex code for memorized locations via persistent, spatially tuned increases in activity. Local field potentials (LFPs) are understood to reflect summed synaptic activity of local neuron populations and may offer a window into network-level processing. We recorded LFPs from areas 8A and 9/46 while two male cynomolgus macaques (Macaca fascicularis) performed a long duration (5.1–15.6 s) memory-guided saccade task. Greater than ~16 Hz, LFP power was contralaterally tuned throughout the memory period. Yet power for both contralateral and ipsilateral targets fell gradually after the first second of the memory period, dropping below baseline after a few seconds. Our results dissociate absolute LFP power from mnemonic tuning and are consistent with modeling work that suggests that decreasing synchronization within a network may improve the stability of memory coding.
KW - Frontal eye fields
KW - Local field potential
KW - Macaque
KW - Prefrontal cortex
KW - Working memory
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85053893803&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3629-17.2018
DO - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3629-17.2018
M3 - Article
C2 - 30093534
AN - SCOPUS:85053893803
SN - 0270-6474
VL - 38
SP - 8177
EP - 8186
JO - Journal of Neuroscience
JF - Journal of Neuroscience
IS - 38
ER -