Demixed principal component analysis of neural population data

Neurons in higher cortical areas, such as the prefrontal cortex, are often tuned to a variety of sensory and motor variables, and are therefore said to display mixed selectivity. This complexity of single neuron responses can obscure what information these areas represent and how it is represented. Here we demonstrate the advantages of a new dimensionality reduction technique, demixed principal component analysis (dPCA), that decomposes population activity into a few components. In addition to systematically capturing the majority of the variance of the data, dPCA also exposes the dependence of the neural representation on task parameters such as stimuli, decisions, or rewards. To illustrate our method we…

• FB
  Fundação Bial

  Award: Fellowship, 389/14