John T. Arsenault

KU Leuven

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Wim Vanduffel

KU Leuven

L.B. Ekstrom

Nashville Oncology Associates

Thomas Janssens

KU Leuven

Rufin Vogels

KU Leuven

H. Kolster

KU Leuven

Lawrence L. Wald

Massachusetts General Hospital

Sjoerd R. Murris

VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research

Joseph B. Mandeville

Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging

Pieter R. Roelfsema

Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience

Béchir Jarraya

Cognitive Neuroimaging Lab

Cooperative Institutions

KU Leuven

Harvard University

Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging

Massachusetts General Hospital

VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Allen Institute for Brain Science

Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology

Inserm

Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience

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Stimulation of the ventral tegmental area induces visual cortical plasticity at the neuronal level

Cell Reports (2021)

Jerome Herpers John T. Arsenault Wim Vanduffel Rufin Vogels

fMRI studies have shown that pairing a task-irrelevant visual feature with electrical micro-stimulation of the ventral tegmental area (VTA-EM) is sufficient to increase the sensory cortical representation of the paired feature and to improve perceptual performance. However, since fMRI provides an indirect measure of neural activity, the neural response changes underlying the fMRI activations are unknown. Here, we pair a task-irrelevant grating orientation with VTA-EM while attention is directed to a difficult orthogonal task. We examine the changes in neural response properties in macaques by recording spiking activity in the posterior inferior temporal cortex, the locus of fMRI-defined plasticity in previous studies. We observe a relative increase in mean spike rate and preference for the VTA-EM paired orientation compared to an unpaired orientation, which is unrelated to attention. These results demonstrate that VTA-EM-stimulus pairing is sufficient to induce sensory cortical plasticity at the spiking level in nonhuman primates.

Stimulus (psychology)

Spike-timing-dependent plasticity

10.1016/j.celrep.2021.109998

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A negative fMRI response to reward in human visual cortex

Tomas Knapen Pieter R. Roelfsema Wim Vanduffel John T. Arsenault Tobias H. Donner

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A reference tissue forward model for improved PET accuracy using within-scan displacement studies

Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism (2021)

Joseph B. Mandeville Michael A. Levine John T. Arsenault Wim Vanduffel Bruce R. Rosen

We report a novel forward-model implementation of the full reference tissue model (fFTRM) that addresses the fast-exchange approximation employed by the simplified reference tissue model (SRTM) by incorporating a non-zero dissociation time constant from the specifically bound compartment. The forward computational approach avoided errors associated with noisy and nonorthogonal basis functions using an inverse linear model. Compared to analysis by a multilinear single-compartment reference tissue model (MRTM), fFTRM provided improved accuracy for estimation of binding potentials at early times in the scan, with no worse reproducibility across sessions. To test the model’s ability to identify small focal changes in binding potential using a within-scan challenge, we employed a nonhuman primate model of focal dopamine release elicited by deep brain microstimulation remote to ventral striatum (VST) during imaging by simultaneous PET and fMRI. The new model reported an unambiguously lateralized response in VST consistent with fMRI, whereas the MRTM-derived response was not lateralized and was consistent with simulations of model bias. The proposed model enabled better accuracy in PET [ 11 C]raclopride displacement studies and may also facilitate challenges sooner after injection, thereby recovering some sensitivity lost to radioactive decay of the PET tracer.

Binding potential

Non human primate

10.1177/0271678x211065212

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In Vivo Identification of Thick, Thin, and Pale Stripes of Macaque Area V2 Using Submillimeter Resolution (f)MRI at 3 T

Cerebral Cortex (2017)

Xiaolian Li Qi Zhu Thomas Janssens John T. Arsenault Wim Vanduffel

Primate area V2 contains a repetitive pattern of thick, thin and pale cytochrome oxidase stripes that are characterized by largely discrete in- and output channels, as well as differences in function, and myelo- and cytoarchitecture. Stripes have been identified mainly using microscope-based imaging of tiny portions of superficially located V2, or by postmortem methods, hence, the quest for (quasi) noninvasive tools to study these mesoscale functional units. Only recently, stripe-like V2 patterns have been demonstrated in humans with high-field (functional) magnetic resonance imaging (f)MRI, but in both such studies only 2 stripe compartments could be identified. Although interstripe distances in monkeys are ~half of those in humans, we show that all 3 V2 stripe classes can be reliably separated using submillimeter (f)MRI (0.6 mm isotropic voxels) on regular 3 T scanners by combining contrast agents and implanted phased-array coils. Specifically, we show highly reproducible fMRI patterns, both within and across subjects, of color-selective thin and disparity-selective thick stripes. Furthermore, reliable MRI-based higher myelin-density was observed in pale stripes. Hence, this is the first study showing segregation of columns using (f)MRI-based methods in macaque cortex, which opens the possibility of studying these elementary building blocks of the visual system noninvasively on a large scale.

Cytoarchitecture

10.1093/cercor/bhx337

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Pairing a visual stimulus with VTA micro-stimulation changes the response properties of posterior inferior temporal cortical neurons

Journal of Vision (2021)

Jerome Herpers Wim Vanduffel John T. Arsenault Rufin Vogels

Training can increase the performance in visual detection and discrimination tasks, a phenomenon of adult plasticity known as visual perceptual learning (VPL). Neural correlates of adult VPL include changes in the selectivity of neurons in visual areas. It is hypothesized that this plasticity is gated by reward signals, even in the absence of attention to the stimuli. Thus, mere pairing of reward with a stimulus can be sufficient to increase the representation of the paired stimulus. Indeed, previous fMRI studies in macaques in which electrical micro-stimulation of the ventral tegmental area (VTA-EM) was paired with a weak visual stimulus showed increased activations in posterior inferior temporal (PIT) cortex for the VTA-EM-paired stimulus (Arsenault & Vanduffel, Nature Communications, 2019). Here, we examined changes in neural responses and selectivity by recording spiking activity in PIT after pairing a grating orientation with VTA-EM. Two monkeys performed an orthogonal color discrimination task, while a low visibility grating was paired with VTA-EM. After 15-20 VTA-EM sessions, daily VTA-EM was followed by multi-unit activity (MUA) recordings in PIT during a fixation task presenting high visibility gratings of different orientations and a color discrimination task presenting low visibility gratings. The experiment was repeated with VTA-EM pairing of the orientation perpendicular to the paired orientation of the initial experiment. We observed that the relative proportion of units with a preference for the VTA-EM-paired orientation increased compared to the orthogonal orientation. A relative increase in mean spike rate was observed for the VTA-EM-paired orientation, as well. Significant effects of pairing were present for response variability (Fano factor) and noise correlations, but inconsistent over subjects, suggesting that the response changes did not result from attentional modulation. In conclusion, pairing VTA-EM with a low visibility grating stimulus while performing an orthogonal task induces changes in orientation preference of PIT neurons.

Stimulus (psychology)

10.1167/jov.21.9.2051

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Behavioral and brain-wide functional consequences of reversible LIP inactivation during visual search

Annelies Gerits Claire Wardak H. Kolster John T. Arsenault Guy A. Orban

Visual Search

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Definition of the macaque posterior parietal regions using MRI-based measures of retinotopy, connectivity, myelination, and function

Thomas Janssens John T. Arsenault Jon̈athan R. Polimeni Wim Vanduffel