Abstract

The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) has been implicated in perceptual decisions, but whether its role is specific to sensory processing or sensorimotor transformation is not well understood. Here, we trained mice to perform a go/no-go visual discrimination task and imaged the activity of neurons in primary visual cortex (V1) and PPC during engaged behavior and passive viewing. Unlike V1 neurons, which respond robustly to stimuli in both conditions, most PPC neurons respond exclusively during task engagement. To test whether signals in PPC primarily encoded the stimulus or the animal’s impending choice, we image the same neurons before and after re-training mice with a reversed sensorimotor contingency. Unlike V1 neurons, most PPC neurons reflect the animal’s choice of the new target stimulus after re-training. Mouse PPC is therefore strongly task-dependent, reflects choice more than stimulus, and may play a role in the transformation of visual inputs into motor commands.

Details

Title
Task-dependent representations of stimulus and choice in mouse parietal cortex
Author
Pho, Gerald N 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Goard, Michael J 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Woodson, Jonathan 3 ; Crawford, Benjamin 3 ; Sur, Mriganka 3 

1  Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA; Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA; Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA 
2  Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA; Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA; Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA; Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA 
3  Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA; Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA 
Pages
1-16
Publication year
2018
Publication date
Jul 2018
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05012-y
ProQuest document ID
2063690181
Copyright
© 2018. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.