Locus coeruleus norepinephrine selectively controls visual attention

Abstract

Norepinephrine (NE) neuromodulation plays a role in diverse non-specific physiological and cognitive functions including wakefulness, arousal, and cognitive performance. NE modulation of neuronal responses in the cerebral cortex has been proposed to mediate improved task-specific behavior by enhancing sensory processing. However, the sensory-specific NE contribution on performance remains unknown. We directly tested the role of NE-mediated neuromodulation of sensory signals on perceptual performance in non-human primates doing visual spatial attention tasks. We found that NE neurons in the locus coeruleus (LC) respond selectively to an attended stimulus. Optogenetically enhancing the sensory-specific responses of LC-NE neurons improved the monkeys sensory discrimination in a spatially selectively way, without affecting motor processing. These findings identify a specific contribution of NE neuromodulation of sensory representations to selective attention and performance. One-Sentence SummaryOptogenetic activation of monkey locus coeruleus causes a strong and spatially selective improvement in visual sensitivity. Graphical abstractElevation of phasic norepinephrine signal by optogenetic stimulation of locus coeruleus in non-human primates selectively improves attentional performance that attributes to enhanced sensory sensitivity. O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=96 SRC="FIGDIR/small/510394v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1"> View larger version (24K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@7966c1org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@49395borg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@154c101org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@14b63ce_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG