ArticleNature communications2018
Single neurons may encode simultaneous stimuli by switching between activity patterns.
Article in Nature communications, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 46 papers.
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.
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.
Who cites it
46 citing papers in PubMed, 107 citations in OpenAlex.
- Multiplexed encoding of frequency-modulated sweep features in the inferior colliculus.Journal of neurophysiology · 2026Article
- Drifting population dynamics with transient resets characterize sensorimotor transformation in the monkey superior colliculus.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Unisensory processing of interleaving memristive nanowires enabling multimodal sensing at human-scale resolution.Nature materials · 2026Article
- Spike count analysis for multiplexing inference (SCAMPI).Journal of computational neuroscience · 2026Article
- Working Memory of Multi-Object Scenes in Primate Frontal Cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Simultaneous encoding of sensory features: the role of multiplexing and noise in tactile perception and neural representation.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Article
- Critical scaling of novelty in the cortex.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Article
- Out of the single-neuron straitjacket: Neurons within assemblies change selectivity and their reconfiguration underlies dynamic coding.The Journal of physiology · 2025Article
- Visually evoked activity and variable modulation of auditory responses in the macaque inferior colliculus.Journal of neurophysiology · 2025Article
- Distinct role of primate DLPFC and LIP in hierarchical control of learned saccade sequences.iScience · 2025Article
- A computational approach to the N-back task.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Neural Transformation from Retinotopic to Background-Centric Coordinates in the Macaque Precuneus.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Clinico-physiological correlates of Parkinson's disease from multi-resolution basal ganglia recordings.NPJ Parkinson's disease · 2024Article
- Oscillations in an artificial neural network convert competing inputs into a temporal code.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Working memory expedites the processing of visual signals within the extrastriate cortex.iScience · 2024Article
- Article
- Mixed Representations of Sound and Action in the Auditory Midbrain.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Signal switching may enhance processing power of the brain.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
How the brain preserves information about multiple simultaneous items is poorly understood. We report that single neurons can represent multiple stimuli by interleaving signals across time. We record single units in an auditory region, the inferior colliculus, while monkeys localize 1 or 2 simultaneous sounds. During dual-sound trials, we find that some neurons fluctuate between firing rates observed for each single sound, either on a whole-trial or on a sub-trial timescale. These fluctuations are correlated in pairs of neurons, can be predicted by the state of local field potentials prior to sound onset, and, in one monkey, can predict which sound will be reported first. We find corroborating evidence of fluctuating activity patterns in a separate dataset involving responses of inferotemporal cortex neurons to multiple visual stimuli. Alternation between activity patterns corresponding to each of multiple items may therefore be a general strategy to enhance the brain processing capacity, potentially linking such disparate phenomena as variable neural firing, neural oscillations, and limits in attentional/memory capacity.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.