Voltage-sensitive dye imaging of mouse neocortex during a whisker detection task

Abstract

Abstract. Sensorimotor processing occurs in a highly distributed manner in the mammalian neocortex. The spatiotemporal dynamics of electrical activity in the dorsal mouse neocortex can be imaged using voltagesensitive dyes (VSDs) with near-millisecond temporal resolution and ∼100-μm spatial resolution. Here, we trained mice to lick a water reward spout after a 1-ms deflection of the C2 whisker, and we imaged cortical dynamics during task execution with VSD RH1691. Responses to whisker deflection were highly dynamic and spatially highly distributed, exhibiting high variability from trial to trial in amplitude and spatiotemporal dynamics. We differentiated trials based on licking and whisking behavior. Hit trials, in which the mouse licked after the whisker stimulus, were accompanied by overall greater depolarization compared to miss trials, with the strongest hit versus miss differences being found in frontal cortex. Prestimulus whisking decreased behavioral performance by increasing the fraction of miss trials, and these miss trials had attenuated cortical sensorimotor responses. Our data suggest that the spatiotemporal dynamics of depolarization in mouse sensorimotor cortex evoked by a single brief whisker deflection are subject to important behavioral modulation during the execution of a simple, learned, goal-directed sensorimotor transformation.

Movement and performance predict widespread cortical activity in a visual detection task

“…Large-scale imaging of dorsal cortex has recently been applied to mice performing a diversity of sensory-motor tasks (Goard et al 2016;Allen et al 2017;Kyriakatos et al 2016;Makino et al 2017;Stringer et al 2019;Musall et al 2019). An unexpected finding throughout these studies is the widespread activation of cortex during task performance.…”

Long‐range cortical dynamics: a perspective from the mouse sensorimotor whisker system

“…Mice adjust their whisker motor strategies according to task conditions. During tactile detection, whisking prior to and during stimulation reduces task performance, suggesting that mice might refrain from whisking in order to increase stimulus detection (Kyriakatos et al, 2017). In fact, facial nerve transection suggests that detection of passive deflection does not require whisker movement (Sachidhanandam et al, 2013).…”

State-aware detection of sensory stimuli in the cortex of the awake mouse

“…As an example, consider the detection of a sensory stimulus, which has been foundational in the human [17][18][19][20][21][22] and non-human primate psychophysical literature [23,24] and serves as one of the most widely utilized behavioral paradigms in rodent literature [25][26][27]. In an attempt to link the underlying neural variability to behavior, the principal framework for describing sensory perception of stimuli near the physical limits of detectability is signal detection theory [28].…”