Evidence map›Paper›PMID 28783140›Full record

ArticleNature neuroscience2017

Structure in neural population recordings: an expected byproduct of simpler phenomena?

Gamaleldin F Elsayed, John P Cunningham

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Nature neuroscience, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 93 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
93citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

93 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Trial
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  11. Distinct neural dynamics in the ventral hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex during social information processing.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
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  15. Review
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  20. Preparatory activity and the expansive null-space.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2024
    Review

33 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Gamaleldin F ElsayedCenter for Theoretical Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4676-4220
John P CunninghamCenter for Theoretical Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9125-3027

Funding

Diversity supplement to Analysis of Nonstationary Point Process DataR01MH064537 · NIMH · CARNEGIE-MELLON UNIVERSITY · PI KASS, ROBERT E · 2001 to 2024
$7.2M
CRCNS: Understanding flexible neural computations in the motor cortexR01NS100066 · NINDS · COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES · PI CUNNINGHAM, JOHN PATRICK · 2016 to 2018
$937k
NIMH NIH HHS R01 MH064537NINDS NIH HHS R01 NS100066Wellcome Trust
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Neuroscientists increasingly analyze the joint activity of multineuron recordings to identify population-level structures believed to be significant and scientifically novel. Claims of significant population structure support hypotheses in many brain areas. However, these claims require first investigating the possibility that the population structure in question is an expected byproduct of simpler features known to exist in data. Classically, this critical examination can be either intuited or addressed with conventional controls. However, these approaches fail when considering population data, raising concerns about the scientific merit of population-level studies. Here we develop a framework to test the novelty of population-level findings against simpler features such as correlations across times, neurons and conditions. We apply this framework to test two recent population findings in prefrontal and motor cortices, providing essential context to those studies. More broadly, the methodologies we introduce provide a general neural population control for many population-level hypotheses.

Indexed as

AnimalsMacaca mulattaMaleMotor CortexNerve NetNeuronsPhotic StimulationPrefrontal CortexPsychomotor Performance

Identifiers

PMID28783140
PMCPMC5577566

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.