Figure 7. Temporal dynamics of r_sc structure.

a. The average, task-aligned r_sc matrix (as in Fig. 2e) obtained using spike counts from 200-ms windows during the stimulus presentation. A similar structure was present at all time points (4 examples shown). b–c. Plots showing the temporal dynamics of two statistical measures of the observed r_sc structure (mean +/− 1 bootstrap SEM). The colored lines indicate the example time points shown in (a). The population mean r_sc value (b) showed a sharp drop shortly after stimulus onset, as seen in other studies⁵⁰, and then a gradual recovery over the course of the trial. The amplitude of the r_sc structure, quantified using the slope of the regression line of r_sc obtained in each 200-ms window against r_sc obtained from trial-length spike counts, is in (c). Apart from an increase at the first time point, likely due to the onset of the visual stimulus, this showed no significant modulation over the course of the trial. Note that values are all significantly less than 1 because smaller counting windows introduced a source of uncorrelated noise across trials.