Arousal increases the representational capacity of

Authors: Tomer Fekete Itamar Pitowsky Amiram Grinvald David B Omer

Publish Date: 2009/03/27

Volume: 27, Issue: 2, Pages: 211-227

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Abstract

Arousal patently transforms the faculties of complex organisms Although typical changes in cortical activity such as seen in EEG and LFP measurements are associated with change in state of arousal it remains unclear what in the constitution of such state dependent activity enables this profound enhancement of ability We put forward the hypothesis that arousal modulates cortical activity by rendering it more fit to represent information We argue that representational capacity is of a dual nature—it requires not only that cortical tissue generate complex activity ie spatiotemporal neuronal events but also a complex cortical activity space which is comprised of such spatiotemporal events We explain that the topological notion of complexity—homology—is the pertinent measure of the complexity of neuronal activity spaces as homological structure indicates not only the degree to which underlying activity is inherently clustered but also registers the effective dimensionality of the configurations formed by such clusters Changes of this sort in the structure of cortical activity spaces can serve as the basis of the enhanced capacity to make perceptual/behavioral distinctions brought about by arousal To show the feasibility of these ideas we analyzed voltage sensitive dye imaging VSDI data acquired from primate visual cortex in disparate states of arousal Our results lend some support to the theory first as arousal increased so did the complexity of activity that is the complexity of VSDI movies Moreover the complexity of structure of activity space that is VSDI movie space as measured by persistent homology—a multi scale topological measure of complexity—increased with arousal as wellWe thank Rina Hildesheim for the dyes and Yuval Toledo for computer technical assistance We thank David Blanc for the invaluable discussions of the ideas presented here Also we thank Shimon Edelman for his meticulous reading of the manuscript and helpful remarks We thank Vanessa Robins and Boaz Nadler for helpful advice Finally we thank Neta Zach for just about everything This work was supported by The Weizmann Institute of Science Rehovot Israel and an EU Daisy grant

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