Sensory representation of an auditory cued tactile stimulus in the posterior parietal cortex of the mouse

Abstract

Sensory association cortices receive diverse inputs with their role in representing and integrating multi-sensory content remaining unclear. Here we examined the neuronal correlates of an auditory-tactile stimulus sequence in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) using 2-photon calcium imaging in awake mice. We find that neuronal subpopulations in layer 2/3 of PPC reliably represent texture-touch events, in addition to auditory cues that presage the incoming tactile stimulus. Notably, altering the flow of sensory events through omission of the cued texture touch elicited large responses in a subset of neurons hardly responsive to or even inhibited by the tactile stimuli. Hence, PPC neurons were able to discriminate not only tactile stimulus features (i.e., texture graininess) but also between the presence and omission of the texture stimulus. Whereas some of the neurons responsive to texture omission were driven by looming-like auditory sounds others became recruited only with tactile sensory experience. These findings indicate that layer 2/3 neuronal populations in PPC potentially encode correlates of expectancy in addition to auditory and tactile stimuli.