Laminar processing of numerosity supports a canonical cortical microcircuit in human parietal cortex
van Dijk, Jelle A; Fracasso, Alessio; Petridou, Natalia; Dumoulin, Serge O
(2021) Current Biology, volume 31, issue 20, pp. 4635 - 4640.e4
(Article)
Abstract
As neural signals travel through the visual hierarchy, spatial precision decreases and specificity for stimulus features increases.1-4 A similar hierarchy has been found for laminar processing in V1, where information from the thalamus predominantly targets the central layers, while spatial precision decreases and feature specificity increases toward superficial and deeper
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layers.5-17 This laminar processing scheme is proposed to represent a canonical cortical microcircuit that is similar across the cortex.11,18-21 Here, we go beyond early visual cortex and investigate whether processing of numerosity (the set size of a group of items) across cortical depth in the parietal association cortex follows this hypothesis. Numerosity processing is implicated in many tasks such as multiple object tracking,22 mathematics,23-25 decision making,26 and dividing attention.27 Neurons in the parietal association cortex are tuned to numerosity, with both a preferred numerosity tuning and tuning width (i.e., specificity).28-30 We quantified preferred numerosity responses across cortical depth in the parietal association cortex with ultra-high field fMRI and population receptive field-based numerosity modeling.1,28,31 We find that numerosity responses sharpen, i.e., become increasingly specific, moving away from the central layers. This suggests that the laminar processing scheme for numerosity processing in the parietal cortex is similar to primary visual cortex, providing support for the canonical cortical microcircuit hypothesis beyond primary visual cortex.
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Keywords: computational modeling, cortical organization, fMRI, numerosity, population receptive fields, visual processing, General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, General Biochemistry,Genetics and Molecular Biology, General Neuroscience, Journal Article
ISSN: 0960-9822
Publisher: Cell Press
Note: Funding Information: This work has been supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 641805 (S.O.D.), Ammodo KNAW Award (S.O.D.), and Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) Vici grant 016.Vici.185.050 (S.O.D.) and Vidi grant 13339 (N.P.). A.F. is supported by a grant from the Biotechnology and Biology Research Council (BBSRC, grant number BB/S006605/1 ) and the Bial Foundation , Bial Foundation Grants Programme 2020/21, A-29315 . N.P. is supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health ( R01MH111417 ). The Spinoza Centre is a joint initiative of the Amsterdam University Medical Center, VU University, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. Funding Information: This work has been supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sk?odowska-Curie grant agreement no. 641805 (S.O.D.), Ammodo KNAW Award (S.O.D.), and Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) Vici grant 016.Vici.185.050 (S.O.D.) and Vidi grant 13339 (N.P.). A.F. is supported by a grant from the Biotechnology and Biology Research Council (BBSRC, grant number BB/S006605/1) and the Bial Foundation, Bial Foundation Grants Programme 2020/21, A-29315. N.P. is supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health (R01MH111417). The Spinoza Centre is a joint initiative of the Amsterdam University Medical Center, VU University, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. J.A.v.D. and S.O.D. designed the experiment; J.A.v.D. collected the data; J.A.v.D. and A.F. analyzed the data; all authors contributed to and reviewed the manuscript text; J.A.v.D. prepared all figures; and S.O.D. N.P. and A.F. provided general supervision and guidance throughout. The authors declare no competing interests. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Elsevier Inc.
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