# The influence of task context on neural population activity during natural scene discrimination

> **NIH NIH F31** · UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH · 2021 · $46,036

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
 Environmental context heavily influences our visual perception, allowing us to extract relevant information
from the overwhelming amount of sensory input found in the natural world. This is particularly important when
we need to discriminate sensory inputs in our natural environment, such as finding a friend in a crowd. Context
can be separated into two components that could affect our ability to make discriminations: how familiar we are
with the visual input, and what we expect the input to be. Studies investigating the effects of contextual
modulation have primarily assessed the activity of individual neurons using only a few simplified stimuli in tasks
where these two components can’t be separated. This greatly limits our ability to generalize these findings to
natural environments where familiarity and expectation influence neural population activity and shape our
perceptual abilities. The overarching goal of this proposal is to investigate the effects of task context on shaping
neural population responses and behavioral performance. In the first specific aim, we will assess the effect of
modulating stimulus familiarity on neural activity and behavior. We hypothesize that increased stimulus familiarity
improves our perceptual abilities by modulating population activity to enhance the encoding of the stimulus. In
the second specific aim, we will assess the effect of modulating the expectation of how a stimulus will change
on neural activity and behavior. We hypothesize that expectation modifies population activity to benefit the
current task context and improve behavioral performance. Our strategy to employ population-level measures will
reveal signals hidden from analyses that only measure single neurons. The results of this study will establish
how neural population activity is tailored to different aspects of an environmental context to improve our visual
perception in a naturalistic environment. This will enhance our understanding of the basic neural mechanisms
affecting visual perception in a non-disease state, making it possible to progress in developing treatments for
disorders where visual perception is awry.
 In addition to an exciting and innovative research project, this proposal outlines a comprehensive training
plan that will provide me with essential training to advance towards a career as an independent researcher. This
plan emphasizes 1) gaining a deeper conceptual understanding of the neural underpinnings of visual perception,
2) learning the necessary experimental techniques and computational analyses required to relate neuronal
population activity to behavior, 3) improving scientific communication skills, 4) broadening my scientific network,
and 5) providing me with opportunities to mentor others. The training will be conducted under the guidance of
Dr. Matthew Smith, an expert in relating neural population activity to visual perception, at the University of
Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10155721
- **Project number:** 1F31EY031975-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH
- **Principal Investigator:** Patricia Lena Stan
- **Activity code:** F31 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $46,036
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-02-01 → 2023-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10155721

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10155721, The influence of task context on neural population activity during natural scene discrimination (1F31EY031975-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10155721. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*