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Representations in human primary visual cortex drift over time

Author

Listed:
  • Zvi N. Roth

    (National Institute of Mental Health, NIH)

  • Elisha P. Merriam

    (National Institute of Mental Health, NIH)

Abstract

Primary sensory regions are believed to instantiate stable neural representations, yet a number of recent rodent studies suggest instead that representations drift over time. To test whether sensory representations are stable in human visual cortex, we analyzed a large longitudinal dataset of fMRI responses to images of natural scenes. We fit the fMRI responses using an image-computable encoding model and tested how well the model generalized across sessions. We found systematic changes in model fits that exhibited cumulative drift over many months. Convergent analyses pinpoint changes in neural responsivity as the source of the drift, while population-level representational dissimilarities between visual stimuli were unchanged. These observations suggest that downstream cortical areas may read-out a stable representation, even as representations within V1 exhibit drift.

Suggested Citation

  • Zvi N. Roth & Elisha P. Merriam, 2023. "Representations in human primary visual cortex drift over time," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-10, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-023-40144-w
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40144-w
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tyler D. Marks & Michael J. Goard, 2021. "Author Correction: Stimulus-dependent representational drift in primary visual cortex," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-1, December.
    2. Ji Xia & Tyler D. Marks & Michael J. Goard & Ralf Wessel, 2021. "Stable representation of a naturalistic movie emerges from episodic activity with gain variability," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-15, December.
    3. Zvi N. Roth & Kendrick Kay & Elisha P. Merriam, 2022. "Natural scene sampling reveals reliable coarse-scale orientation tuning in human V1," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-13, December.
    4. Yevgeniy B. Sirotin & Aniruddha Das, 2009. "Anticipatory haemodynamic signals in sensory cortex not predicted by local neuronal activity," Nature, Nature, vol. 457(7228), pages 475-479, January.
    5. Tyler D. Marks & Michael J. Goard, 2021. "Stimulus-dependent representational drift in primary visual cortex," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-16, December.
    6. Sadegh Ebrahimi & Jérôme Lecoq & Oleg Rumyantsev & Tugce Tasci & Yanping Zhang & Cristina Irimia & Jane Li & Surya Ganguli & Mark J. Schnitzer, 2022. "Emergent reliability in sensory cortical coding and inter-area communication," Nature, Nature, vol. 605(7911), pages 713-721, May.
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