@article{6a8612e3e1004c50a76b4c62318b43d4,
title = "Stimulus onset quenches neural variability: A widespread cortical phenomenon",
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.",
author = "Churchland, {Mark M.} and Yu, {Byron M.} and Cunningham, {John P.} and Sugrue, {Leo P.} and Cohen, {Marlene R.} and Corrado, {Greg S.} and Newsome, {William T.} and Clark, {Andrew M.} and Paymon Hosseini and Scott, {Benjamin B.} and Bradley, {David C.} and Smith, {Matthew A.} and Adam Kohn and Movshon, {J. Anthony} and Armstrong, {Katherine M.} and Tirin Moore and Chang, {Steve W.} and Snyder, {Lawrence H.} and Lisberger, {Stephen G.} and Priebe, {Nicholas J.} and Finn, {Ian M.} and David Ferster and Ryu, {Stephen I.} and Gopal Santhanam and Maneesh Sahani and Shenoy, {Krishna V.}",
note = "Funding Information: This work was supported by a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellowship (M.M.C.), Burroughs Welcome Fund Career Awards in the Biomedical Sciences (M.M.C. and K.V.S.), Gatsby Charitable Foundation (M.S. and B.M.Y.), US National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience grant R01-NS054283 (K.V.S. and M.S.), the Michael Flynn Stanford Graduate Fellowship (J.P.C.), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and NIH grant EY05603 (W.T.N., L.P.S., M.R.C. and G.S.C.), a Howard Hughes Medical Institute predoctoral fellowship (M.R.C.), NIH grant EY014924 (T.M. and K.M.A.), Sloan Foundation (T.M. and K.V.S.), Pew Charitable Trust (T.M.), NIH EY015958 and EY018894 (M.A.S.), NIH EY02017 and EY04440 (J.A.M.), NIH EY016774 (A.K.), NIH 1 EY13138-01 (D.C.B., A.M.C., P.H. and B.B.S.), NIH EY019288 (N.J.P.), the Pew Charitable Trust (N.J.P.), EY04726 (D.F.), US National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowships (B.M.Y. and G.S.), National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships (B.M.Y. and G.S.), the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation (K.V.S. and S.I.R.), and the awards from Stanford Center for Integrated Systems, National Science Foundation Center for Neuromorphic Systems Engineering at Caltech, Office of Naval Research, NIH Director{\textquoteright}s Pioneer Award 1DP1OD006409 and Whitaker Foundation (K.V.S.).",
year = "2010",
month = mar,
doi = "10.1038/nn.2501",
language = "English",
volume = "13",
pages = "369--378",
journal = "Nature neuroscience",
issn = "1097-6256",
number = "3",
}