Biomedical subjects

Yusuke Murayama

Publications and source records attributed to Yusuke Murayama.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

The effect of artifacts on dependence measurement in fMRI.

The study of effective connectivity by means of neuroimaging depends on the measurement of similarity between activity patterns at different locations in the brain, without necessarily presupposing a particular model for this dependence. When these interactions are measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques, however, imaging and physiological artifacts create patterns of dependence that may be unrelated to cortical activity. We demonstrate some of these effects through the measurement of short-range dependencies present in fMRI scans of the primary visual cortex (V1) in the anaesthetized macaque monkey. High-field (4.7 T) fMRI scans were conducted to measure responses based on the blood oxygen level-dependent contrast mechanism, during periods of no sensory stimulation and of visual stimulation with rotating polar-transformed checkerboard gratings. Dependence between the haemodynamic activity at different spatial locations (i.e., different voxels) was measured using correlation, mutual information and functional covariance. Particular attention was paid to understanding the sources of spurious dependence that may be observed during such investigations. Two main effects were detected: (a) short-range correlations introduced by the process of image reconstruction and (b) perturbations in the haemodynamic response caused by breathing. The image reconstruction artifacts were shown to create an artificially high short-range dependence in the readout direction of the scan, and the breathing artifacts caused enhanced short-range dependence in both the readout and phase-encode directions. Additional dependence in the phase-encode direction due to image-ghosting is also possible but will not be discussed in this report, as it can be alleviated by fine adjustment of preemphasis (elimination of eddy currents). A technique is described for removing breathing artifacts, and the effect of breathing on the apparent dependence between voxels is illustrated. The correlation of haemodynamic activity with the stimulus was found to be affected by breathing, although this effect can be neutralised by averaging the haemodynamic responses over many repetitions of the stimulus. Nonetheless, patterns of dependent activity between voxels may be lost in this averaging process, which makes the removal of breathing artifacts necessary if statistical dependence and the study of effective connectivity is the primary aim of an investigation.

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PubMed2006

Tracing neural circuits in vivo with Mn-enhanced MRI.

The application of MRI-visible paramagnetic tracers to reveal in vivo connectivity can provide important subject-specific information for multisite, multielectrode intracortical recordings in combined behavioral and physiology experiments. To establish the use of such tracers in the nonhuman primate, we recently compared the specificity of the anterograde tracer Mn2+ with that of wheat-germ-agglutinin conjugated to horseradish peroxidase (WGA-HRP) in experiments tracing the neuronal connections of the basal ganglia of the monkey. It was shown that Mn2+ and WGA-HRP yield the same projection patterns and that the former tracer crosses at least two synapses, for it could be found in thalamus following injections into the striatum. Here we provide evidence that Mn2+ reaches the cortex following striatum injections and, thus, is transferred even further than previously shown. In other words, used as a paramagnetic MRI tracer, Mn2+ can permit the visualization of neural networks covering at least four processing stages. Moreover, unilateral intravitreal injections show that Mn2+ is sufficiently synapse specific to permit visualization of the lamina of the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN). Interestingly, the transfer rate of the substance reflected the well-known axonal size differences between the parvocellular and magnocellular layers of dLGN. After intravitreal injections, we were able to demonstrate transfer of Mn2+ into several subcortical and cortical areas, including the inferotemporal cortex. The specificity of the transsynaptic transfer of manganese that we report here indicates the value of this tracer for chronic studies of development and plasticity, as well as for studies of brain pathology.

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PubMed2003

Coding of visual patterns and textures in monkey inferior temporal cortex.

Neural coding for texture features of visual objects was investigated in monkey inferior temporal cortex by inactivating intrinsic GABAergic inhibition. The inactivation enabled a substantial number of cells to respond to originally ineffective texture pattern that had a particular feature distinct from the originally effective pattern, or to ineffective texture and non-texture stimuli that possessed a component feature of the originally effective texture. Cells that showed selectivity changes related to a texture feature were often met along a vertical recording track. We suggest that a texture feature is coded by a group of cells which signal different aspects of the texture. The coding occurs at different processing levels, from extracting a particular feature within patterns to detecting complex texture features combined with color and shape of natural objects.

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PubMed2003

Very slow activity fluctuations in monkey visual cortex: implications for functional brain imaging.

We examined fluctuations in band-limited power (BLP) of local field potential (LFP) signals recorded from multiple electrodes in visual cortex of the monkey during different behavioral states. We asked whether such signals demonstrated coherent fluctuations over time-scales of seconds and minutes, and would thus serve as good candidates for direct comparison with data obtained from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We obtained the following results. (i) The BLP of the local field displayed fluctuations at many time-scales, with particularly large amplitude at very low frequencies (<0.1 Hz). (ii) These fluctuations exhibited high coherence between electrode pairs, particularly for BLP signals derived from the gamma frequency range. (iii) Coherence in the BLP, unlike that in the raw LFP, did not fall off sharply as a function of cortical distance. (iv) The structure and coherence of BLP changes were highly similar under distinctly different behavioral states. These results demonstrate the existence of widespread coherent activity fluctuations in the brain of the awake monkey over very long time-scales. We propose that such signals may make a significant contribution to the high variability observed in the time course of physiological signals, including those measured with functional imaging techniques. The results are discussed in the context of combined fMRI/electrophysiological recordings.

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PubMed2002

Contribution of GABAergic inhibition to receptive field structures of monkey inferior temporal neurons.

Receptive field (RF) structures of neurons in area TE of the monkey inferior temporal cortex were investigated under blockade of inhibition mediated by gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Bicuculline methiodide, a GABA(A) receptor antagonist, was microiontophoretically administered to TE neurons. Blockade of inhibition enhanced responses to a particular range of visual stimuli not only at the RF center, but also at the periphery of or outside RFs where the stimuli originally evoked little or no response, enlarging the RFs. The strongest responses under normal and uninhibited conditions occurred at the RF center in most neurons. The largest increase in responses, reflecting the strongest inhibitory input, usually occurred at the RF center, but in some neurons it occurred in the periphery. A neuron had a silent region within its RF where some stimuli effective at adjacent locations could not elicit responses even under blockade of inhibition. We suggest that (i) afferent information to individual TE neurons originates from a wide retinotopic region beyond their normal RF; (ii) the afferent convergence is not necessarily complete throughout a RF; and (iii) GABAergic inhibition contributes to the generation of RF structures of TE neurons.

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