Neural activity and behavior are both notoriously variable, with responses differing widely
between repeated presentation of identical stimuli or trials. Recent results in humans and …

The state of the brain and body constantly varies on rapid and slow timescales. These
variations contribute to the apparent noisiness of sensory responses at both the neural and …

Mood, motivation, attention, and arousal are behavioral states having a profound impact on
cognition. Behavioral states are mediated though the peripheral nervous system and …

Visual cortical neurons fire at higher rates to visual stimuli during locomotion than during
immobility, while maintaining orientation selectivity. The mechanisms underlying this change …

Rapidly growing empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that the cortex operates near
criticality. Although the confirmation of this hypothesis would mark a significant advance in …

The activity of the cerebral cortex is thought to depend on the precise relationship between
synaptic excitation and inhibition,,,. In the visual cortex, in particular, intracellular …

During even the most quiescent behavioral periods, the cortex and thalamus express rich
spontaneous activity in the form of slow (< 1 Hz), synchronous network state transitions …

Sleep is universal in animals, but its specific functions remain elusive. We propose that
sleep's primary function is to allow individual neurons to perform prophylactic cellular …

The more we anticipate a response to a predictable stimulus, the faster we react. This
empirical observation has been confirmed and quantified by many investigators suggesting …

Neocortical activity is permeated with endogenously generated fluctuations, but how these
dynamics affect goal-directed behavior remains a mystery. We found that ensemble neural …