P143 Redundant stimulus encoding in ferret cortex during a lateralized detection task
Loren Koçillari*1,2, Edgar Galindo-Leon2, Florian Pieper2, Stefano Panzeri1, Andreas K. Engel2 1Institute for Neural Information Processing, Center for Molecular Neurobiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), Hamburg, Germany
2Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), 20246 Hamburg, Germany
*Email: l.kocillari@uke.de Introduction
The brain’s ability to integrate diverse sources of information is crucial for perception and decision-making. It can combine inputs synergistically to increase information capacity or redundantly to enhance signal reliability and robustness. Previous research has shown that redundant information between mouse auditory neurons increases during correct compared to incorrect trials in a tone discrimination task [1]. However, it remains unclear how redundancy’s behavioral role generalizes at larger scales, across frequency bands, and between unimodal and multimodal sensory stimuli. Using Partial Information Decomposition (PID) [2], we analyze redundant and synergistic information in ferret cortical activity during an audiovisual task.
Methods We studied information processing in behaving ferrets during a visual or audiovisual stimulus detection task [3]. Brain activity from auditory, visual, and parietal areas of the left hemisphere was recorded using a 64-channel ECoG array [3]. We quantified task-related changes in single-channel local field potential (LFP) power and phase across time and frequency bands. We assessed stimulus encoding in individual channels by computing time-resolved Shannon mutual information between stimulus location and LFP power or phase. Finally, using PID, we quantified behaviorally relevant synergistic and redundant stimulus-related information conveyed by channel pairs at information peaks, in relation to correct choices and faster reaction times.
Results We found that stimulus information, for both LFP power and phase, was primarily present in the peri-stimulus interval at lower frequency bands (theta and alpha), while beta and gamma bands contained less information. Stimulus information in the theta band was greater in hit trials than in miss trials and in fast-hit trials than in slow-hit trials, suggesting that the information content of theta activity is behaviorally relevant. Redundancy across channel pairs in the theta-band was higher in hit than in miss trials and in fast-hit trials than in slow-hit trials, whereas synergy was greater in miss and slow-hit trials.
Discussion Our results suggest that the amount of information encoded in the theta band is behaviorally relevant for perceptual discrimination. They also indicate that redundancy is more beneficial than synergy for correct or rapid perceptual judgements during both visual and audiovisual stimulus detection. This supports the notion that the advantages of redundancy in downstream signal propagation and robustness outweigh its limitations of the total information that can be encoded across areas.
Acknowledgements This work was supported by the cICMs ERC-2022-AdG-101097402 (to AKE). References 1.Koçillari, L., et al. (2023). Behavioural relevance of redundant and synergistic stimulus information between functionally connected neurons in mouse auditory cortex.Brain Informatics,10(1), 34. 2.Williams, PL, Beer, RD (2010). Nonnegative decomposition of multivariate information.arXiv preprintarXiv:1004.2515. 3.Galindo-Leon, E. E., et al. (2025). Dynamic changes in large-scale functional connectivity prior to stimulation determine performance in a multisensory task.Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience,19, 1524547.
