S01-203 - Higher cognition in crows and monkeys shares a neuronal foundation

Session Name
1510 - Poster Session 01 - Section: Emergent Dynamics in Neural Networks (ID 501)
Date
10.07.2022
Session Time
09:30 AM - 01:00 PM

Abstract

Abstract Body

The mammalian neocortex produces coordinated neuronal dynamics that result in distinct local field potentials (LFP). Models of higher cognition often implicitly assume a layered neocortical organization. Higher associative regions of bird brains do not have cortical layering, yet these regions exhibit neuronal single-cell correlates of higher cognition that are very similar to those found in mammals.
We investigated the activity of single neurons, neuronal populations, and of LFP in the avian equivalent of prefrontal cortex, while crows performed a highly controlled and cognitively demanding working memory task, adapted from monkeys.
We found that neuronal encoding and maintenance of information were affected by item load, in a way that is virtually identical to results obtained from monkey prefrontal cortex. Further, the neuronal population of crows showed divisive normalization, a computational mechanism also observed in macaque monkeys. Moreover, signatures of LFP in a narrow gamma (30-59 Hz) and the beta frequency bands (13-19 Hz) contained information about the location of the target items on the screen and were modulated by working memory load. These LFP dynamics also included bursts in beta and gamma frequencies, similar to those observed in monkeys.
Our results demonstrate that computational principles underlying higher cognition have evolved convergently, originating from different neural organizations in birds and mammals. Furthermore, similar neural oscillations support the notion that oscillations are a key component of computations underlying cognition. Therefore, our ‘bird’s eye view’ on higher cognition lends support to many modern cognitive theories that so far are entirely based on mammalian data.

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