Noninvasive precision modulation of high-level neural population activity via natural vision perturbations
This addresses the problem of noninvasive neural control for neuroscience, offering a potentially imperceptible method, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing models.
The study tackled the challenge of noninvasive precise modulation of neural activity in the primate ventral visual stream by using natural vision perturbations, achieving strong modulation concentrated on targeted neural sites and accurate injection of experimenter-chosen patterns.
Precise control of neural activity -- modulating target neurons deep in the brain while leaving nearby neurons unaffected -- is an outstanding challenge in neuroscience, generally approached using invasive techniques. This study investigates the possibility of precisely and noninvasively modulating neural activity in the high-level primate ventral visual stream via perturbations on one's natural visual feed. When tested on macaque inferior temporal (IT) neural populations, we found quantitative agreement between the model-predicted and biologically realized effect: strong modulation concentrated on targeted neural sites. We extended this to demonstrate accurate injection of experimenter-chosen neural population patterns via subtle perturbations applied on the background of typical natural visual feeds. These results highlight that current machine-executable models of the ventral stream can now design noninvasive, visually-delivered, possibly imperceptible neural interventions at the resolution of individual neurons.