Integrating Top-Down and Bottom-Up Sensory Processing by Somato-Dendritic Interactions

The classical view of cortical information processing is that of a bottom-up process in a feedforward hierarchy. However, psychophysical, anatomical, and physiological evidence suggests that top-down effects play a crucial role in the processing of input stimuli. Not much is known about the neural mechanisms underlying these effects. Here we investigate a physiologically inspired model of two reciprocally connected cortical areas. Each area receives bottom-up as well as top-down information. This information is integrated by a mechanism that exploits recent findings on somato-dendritic interactions. (1) This results in a burst signal that is robust in the context of noise in bottom-up signals. (2) Investigating the influence of additional top-down information, priming-like effects on the processing of bottom-up input can be demonstrated. (3) In accordance with recent physiological findings, interareal coupling in low-frequency ranges is characteristically enhanced by top-down mechanism...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2000
• Where: JCNS
• Authors: Markus Siegel, Konrad P. Körding, Peter König
• Keywords: JCNS 2000, Top-down, Top-down Effects, Top-down Information