Covariations of cerebral blood volume and single neurons discharge during resting state and behavioral visual cognitive tasks in non-human primates

Abstract

To better understand how the brain allows primates to perform various set of tasks, the ability to simultaneously record the activity of the brain at multiple temporal and spatial scales is challenging but necessary. In non-human primates, combined fMRI and electrophysiological recordings have not disentangle the contributions of spiking activity to the neurovascular response. Here, we combined functional ultrasound imaging (fUS) of cerebral blood volume (CBV) and recording of single-unit activities (SUA) in visual and fronto-medial cortices of behaving macaques. We computed task-induced and SUA-induced CBV activation maps. We demonstrate that SUA provides a significant estimate of the neurovascular response below the typical fMRI voxel spatial resolution of 2mm3. Furthermore, our results also show that single unit and CBV activities are statistically uncorrelated during the resting states but correlate during behaving tasks. Conversely, during the resting states, CBV activities across known connected brain areas are correlated but decorrelate at the onset of the tasks as expected if participating in the default mode network (DMN). These results have important implications for interpreting functional imaging findings collected with fMRI or fUS while one constructs inferences of spiking activities during resting-state or while primates perform tasks.