UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, London, United Kingdom.
Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
Elife. 2021 Jul 30;10:e63163. doi: 10.7554/eLife.63163.
Correlates of sensory stimuli and motor actions are found in multiple cortical areas, but such correlates do not indicate whether these areas are causally relevant to task performance. We trained mice to discriminate visual contrast and report their decision by steering a wheel. Widefield calcium imaging and Neuropixels recordings in cortex revealed stimulus-related activity in visual (VIS) and frontal (MOs) areas, and widespread movement-related activity across the whole dorsal cortex. Optogenetic inactivation biased choices only when targeted at VIS and MOs,proportionally to each site's encoding of the visual stimulus, and at times corresponding to peak stimulus decoding. A neurometric model based on summing and subtracting activity in VIS and MOs successfully described behavioral performance and predicted the effect of optogenetic inactivation. Thus, sensory signals localized in visual and frontal cortex play a causal role in task performance, while widespread dorsal cortical signals correlating with movement reflect processes that do not play a causal role.
在多个皮质区域中发现了感觉刺激和运动动作的相关物，但这些相关物并不能表明这些区域与任务表现有因果关系。我们训练老鼠通过转向轮子来区分视觉对比度并报告他们的决定。在皮质中进行的广角钙成像和 Neuropixels 记录显示，视觉（VIS）和额叶（MOs）区域存在与刺激相关的活动，以及整个背侧皮质的广泛运动相关活动。光遗传学失活仅在靶向 VIS 和 MOs 时偏向于选择，与每个部位对视觉刺激的编码成正比，并且在某些时候与峰值刺激解码相对应。基于 VIS 和 MOs 活动求和与相减的神经测量模型成功地描述了行为表现，并预测了光遗传学失活的效果。因此，定位于视觉和额叶皮质中的感觉信号在任务表现中起着因果作用，而与运动相关的广泛背侧皮质信号反映了不具有因果作用的过程。
