23 papers · ranked by Valyu relevance
Ganxi Xu, Zhao-Rong Lai, Yuting Tang, Yonghao Song + 5 more
Brain encoding models not only serve to decipher how visual stimuli are transformed into neural responses, but also represent a critical step toward visual prostheses that restore vision for patients with severe vision disorders. Brain encoding involves two fundamental steps: achieving faithful reconstruction of neural…
Lihong Cao
The human brain encodes a virtually infinite repertoire of semantic concepts using a finite number of neurons, a feat that defies the capacity limits of classical attractor networks. While “Concept Cells” in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) exhibit extreme sparsity, the information-theoretic principles governing their…
Yue Wang, Peter Brunner, Jon T. Willie, Runnan Cao + 2 more
Object recognition requires integrated processing that extends beyond the visual cortex, incorporating semantic and memory-related processes. However, it remains unclear how different attributes, such as visual, semantic, and memorability features, are encoded and interact during perception. Here, we recorded…
Haitao Wu, Qirui Zhang, Zhouheng Yao, Shangquan Sun + 7 more
Modeling the bidirectional correspondence between external sensory stimuli and internal neural activity has emerged as a critical frontier in neuroscience. However, existing approaches predominantly treat brain encoding and decoding as isolated tasks, relying heavily on unimodal alignment and external priors while…
Théo Desbordes, Itsaso Olasagasti, Nicolas Piron, Sophie Schwartz + 1 more
Multivariate decoding analyses have become a cornerstone method in cognitive neuroscience. When applied to time-resolved brain imaging signals, they provide insights into the temporal dynamics of information processing in the brain. In particular, the temporal generalization (TG) method—where a decoder trained at one…
Robert Worden
This paper uses simple arguments to derive a negative conclusion: that a computer cannot be conscious. If the brain is only a neural computer, brains cannot be conscious. Consciousness implies that there is something else happening in the brain, besides computation. In a running computer, information about outside…
Anirudha Kemtur, Francois Paugam, Basile Pinsard, Yann Harel + 5 more
Videogames provide a promising framework to understand brain activity in a rich, engaging, and active environment, in contrast to mostly passive tasks currently dominating the field, such as image viewing. Analyzing videogames neuroimaging data is, however, challenging, and relies on time-intensive manual annotations…
Weijian Mai, Mu Nan, Yu Zhu, Jiahang Cao + 5 more
Visual encoding and decoding models act as gateways to understanding the neural mechanisms underlying human visual perception. Typically, visual encoding models that predict brain activity from stimuli and decoding models that reproduce stimuli from brain activity are treated as distinct tasks, requiring separate…
Huanqiu Zhang, Israel Nelken, Tatyana Sharpee
Deciphering the neural code requires identifying its fundamental symbols or code-words. Neural activity is usually interpreted either as a rate code – based on average spike counts – or as a temporal code, which distinguishes patterns with identical counts. Yet, the symbols of the code remain undefined. Here we show…
Stefano Panzeri, Nicola Marie Engel, Marco Celotto
The publication of Mainen and Sejnowski’s 1995 seminal paper strongly renewed interest in how spike timing contributes to the neural code. In the 3 decades since then, considerable experimental and theoretical research has investigated the timescales at which spike timing contributes to the neural code. Here we review…
Giulio Ruffini
Hierarchical encoding is a structural element of the Free Energy Principle and related information-centric accounts of brain function, but a concrete circuit-level mechanism for it remains elusive. Here we examine Hierarchical Amplitude Modulation (HAM). In this computationally grounded scheme, information is encoded…
Johannes Bertram, Luciano Dyballa, T. Anderson Keller, Savik Kinger + 1 more
Foundation models have shown remarkable success in fitting biological visual systems; however, their black-box nature inherently limits their utility for understanding brain function. Here, we peek inside a SOTA foundation model of neural activity ([83]) as a physiologist might, characterizing each ‘neuron’ based on…
Svenja Klinkowski, Anna Seewald, Björn Fath, Vanessa Kasties + 7 more
Neocortical memories are assumed to rely on slow systems consolidation through hippocampal offline reactivation. However, recent studies show rapid neocortical integration of new memories for information associated with prior knowledge. Testing the limits of rapid neocortical learning, we tracked memory formation…
Jan Sobotka, Luca Baroni, Ján Antolík
Decoding visual stimuli from neural population activity is crucial for understanding the brain and for applications in brain-machine interfaces. However, such biological data is often scarce, particularly in primates or humans, where highthroughput recording techniques, such as two-photon imaging, remain challenging or…
Matteo Ciferri, Matteo Ferrante, Nicola Toschi
Understanding how neural activity gives rise to perception is a central challenge in neuroscience. We address the problem of decoding visual information from highdensity intracortical recordings in primates, using the THINGS Ventral Stream Spiking Dataset. We systematically evaluate the effects of model architecture…
Martin Schottlender, Veronika Volkova, Pengjie Zhou, Ruifeng Zheng + 2 more
Interfacing with Biological Neural Networks (BNNs) requires encoding information into stimulation patterns that can be effectively processed and that enable the underlying system to adapt. Nevertheless, the role of stimulation encoding remains poorly understood. In this work, we compare multiple encoding strategies…
Michael A. Lepori, Kendrick Kay, Greta Tuckute
A central goal of cognitive neuroscience is to characterize the features that are represented by human language cortex. Artificial language models (LMs) have emerged as a powerful tool to address this challenge, but studies relating biological and artificial representations are often criticized as relating one black…
Erhard Bieberich
Consciousness remains poorly understood as a causative force: existing theories treat it as an epiphenomenal correlate of neural activity rather than explaining how inner experience controls its substrate. I present Recurrent Integration Fractal Theory (RIFT), proposing that consciousness arises when fractal…
Hongkeun Kim
Why do some moments imprint themselves in memory while others vanish without a trace? This meta-analysis identifies a dissociation in large-scale brain networks during encoding: networks associated with impairing encoding are task-invariant, whereas those supporting it are task-specific. Drawing on 56 functional…
Manuel Schottdorf, Carlos D. Brody, David W. Tank
Decision making is associated with frontal brain circuits^1–5^ and spatial navigation with the hippocampus^6–8^. In addition, recent work in spatial decision making tasks^9–11^ found single neurons in both areas encoding space conjunctively with other task-relevant variables. However, circuit function is not determined…
Janet M. Baker, Peter Cariani
Waves are fundamental. In our view, waves in the brain may constitute and drive organized neural activity patterns on individual neural and population levels. Their interactions follow basic physical principles. Taking a comprehensive, temporal and spatiotemporal perspective, we endeavor to explain multiple brain…
Jonas Mago, Edmundo Lopez-Sola, Jakub Vohryzek, Michael Lifshitz + 3 more
Minimal Phenomenal Experiences (MPEs) are states of consciousness in which wakefulness is preserved but phenomenal content is low or absent. The Entropic Brain Hypothesis (EBH) is a model of conscious processes that regards the entropy of spontaneous brain activity as a marker of 'phenomenal richness', exemplified by…
Authors not listed
Molecular mechanisms governing initiation steps of the assembly of thousands of endogenous multi-protein complexes (EMCs) remain incompletely understood. Here, multiple lines of observations are reported reflecting the biological functions-aligned initiation sequence of hybrid assembly pathways (HAPs) of EMCs. HAPs…