Correlations between the activity of sensory neurons and behavior: how much do they tell us about a neuron's causality?

摘要: How the activity of sensory neurons elicits perceptions and guides behavior is central to our understanding brain a subject intense investigation in neuroscience. Correlations between have been widely observed are sometimes used infer how guide certain behavior. This view challenged firstly by theoretical considerations that these correlations rely on existence correlated noise its structure, secondly recent empirical observations suggesting such not fixed network property but it depends various sources, varies with subject's mental state.