Early cortical signals in visual stimulus detection
Hunki Kwon,
Sharif I. Kronemer,
Kate L. Christison-Lagay,
Aya Khalaf,
Jiajia Li,
Julia Z Ding,
Noah C Freedman,
Hal Blumenfeld
Affiliations
Hunki Kwon
Department of Neurology, Yale University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT 06520-8018, USA
Sharif I. Kronemer
Department of Neurology, Yale University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT 06520-8018, USA; Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program, Yale University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT 06520, USA
Kate L. Christison-Lagay
Department of Neurology, Yale University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT 06520-8018, USA
Aya Khalaf
Department of Neurology, Yale University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT 06520-8018, USA; Biomedical Engineering and Systems, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt
Jiajia Li
Department of Neurology, Yale University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT 06520-8018, USA; School of Information and Control Engineering, Xian University of Architecture and Technology, Xi'an 710055, China
Julia Z Ding
Department of Neurology, Yale University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT 06520-8018, USA
Noah C Freedman
Department of Neurology, Yale University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT 06520-8018, USA
Hal Blumenfeld
Department of Neurology, Yale University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT 06520-8018, USA; Neuroscience, Yale University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT 06520, USA; Neurosurgery, Yale University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA; Corresponding author at: Department of Neurology, Yale University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT 06520-8018, USA.
During visual conscious perception, the earliest responses linked to signal detection are little known. The current study aims to reveal the cortical neural activity changes in the earliest stages of conscious perception using recordings from intracranial electrodes. Epilepsy patients (N=158) were recruited from a multi-center collaboration and completed a visual word recall task. Broadband gamma activity (40–115Hz) was extracted with a band-pass filter and gamma power was calculated across subjects on a common brain surface. Our results show early gamma power increases within 0-50ms after stimulus onset in bilateral visual processing cortex, right frontal cortex (frontal eye fields, ventral medial/frontopolar, orbital frontal) and bilateral medial temporal cortex regardless of whether the word was later recalled. At the same early times, decreases were seen in the left rostral middle frontal gyrus. At later times after stimulus onset, gamma power changes developed in multiple cortical regions. These included sustained changes in visual and other association cortical networks, and transient decreases in the default mode network most prominently at 300–650ms. In agreement with prior work in this verbal memory task, we also saw greater increases in visual and medial temporal regions as well as prominent later (> 300ms) increases in left hemisphere language areas for recalled versus not recalled stimuli. These results suggest an early signal detection network in the frontal, medial temporal, and visual cortex is engaged at the earliest stages of conscious visual perception.
