A ubiquitous spectrolaminar motif across independent studies, including Mackey et al.'s own data

Alex James Major; Ahmed Abdaltawab; Jessica M Phillips; Tian Wang; Eric Kenji Lee; Maxwell J Lichtenfeld; Chandramouli Chandrasekaran; Yuri B Saalmann; Alexander Maier; Robert Desimone; Earl K Miller; André M Bastos; Diego Mendoza-Halliday

doi:10.1101/2025.05.07.652644

A ubiquitous spectrolaminar motif across independent studies, including Mackey et al.'s own data

bioRxiv [Preprint]. 2025 May 8:2025.05.07.652644. doi: 10.1101/2025.05.07.652644.

Authors

Alex James Major¹, Ahmed Abdaltawab^{2

3}, Jessica M Phillips^{4

5}, Tian Wang⁶, Eric Kenji Lee⁶, Maxwell J Lichtenfeld^{7

8

9

10}, Chandramouli Chandrasekaran^{11

12}, Yuri B Saalmann^{4

5}, Alexander Maier^{7

8

9}, Robert Desimone¹³, Earl K Miller¹, André M Bastos^{7

8

9}, Diego Mendoza-Halliday^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
² Department of Neuroscience, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA.
³ Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
⁴ Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Madison, WI 53706, USA.
⁵ Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Madison, WI 53715, USA.
⁶ Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
⁷ Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, 37212, USA.
⁸ Vanderbilt Vision Research Center, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, 37212, USA.
⁹ Vanderbilt Brain Institute, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, 37212, USA.
¹⁰ Surgical Neurology Branch, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA.
¹¹ Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
¹² Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
¹³ McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.

Abstract

Our study (Mendoza-Halliday et al., 2024) made two contributions: (1) discovery of a ubiquitous cortical motif and (2) a tool derived from it-the Frequency-based Layer Identification Procedure (FLIP and vFLIP). Mackey et al. critique the tool, questioning its advantage over classic current source density (CSD) analysis, and reason backwards to challenge the motif's ubiquity. In our rebuttal, we confirm the spectrolaminar motif in diverse cortical areas using data from multiple research groups (who joined us in this rebuttal) as well as Mackey et al.'s own dataset. Additionally, we introduce vFLIP2, an improved version of our tool that addresses their comments. It reliably identified and localized the motif in our data and Mackey et al.'s data. Our findings reaffirm the motif's ubiquity. We value Mackey et al.'s comments, which helped refine our tool.

Publication types

Preprint

Grants and funding

R00 MH116100/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/United States