Distinct attentional characteristics of neurons with visual feature coding in the primate brain

Visual attention and object recognition are two critical cognitive functions that shape our perception of the world. While these neural processes converge in the temporal cortex, the nature of their interactions remains largely unclear. Here, we systematically investigated the interplay between visual attention and object feature coding by training macaques to perform a free-gaze visual search task with natural stimuli. Recording from a large number of units across multiple brain areas, we found that units exhibiting visual feature coding showed stronger attentional modulation of responses and spike-LFP coherence than units without feature coding. Across brain areas, attention directed towards search targets enhanced the neuronal pattern separation of stimuli, with this enhancement more pronounced for units encoding visual features. Together, our results suggest a complex interplay between visual feature and attention coding in the primate brain, likely driven by interactions between br..., , , # Distinct attentional characteristics of neurons with visual feature coding in the primate brain

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.c866t1ghm](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.c866t1ghm)

We have submitted the responses of all units to both the target and distractor, averaged across stimuli, along with the strength and significance of axis-coding for all units (Response_fov.mat & Response_peri.mat), the responses of all units to the cue, target, and distractor, sorted by stimulus (Response), the Granger causality between each pair of unit and local field potential (LFP; Granger.mat), parameters related to the axis-coding of each unit (fov accuracy & peri accuracy), spike-LFP coherence between each pair of unit and LFP (Connectivity.zip), metadata for each unit (cell list6 & cell list 8), the t-SNE of the neural representation of the stimuli (tsne), an image of an example macaque brain (brain.jpg), and the MATLAB script (Code.zip).

## Description of the data and file structure

### Response\...