Cortical recruitment determines learning dynamics and strategy

Sebastian Ceballo, Jacques Bourg, Alexandre Kempf, Zuzanna Piwkowska, Aurélie Daret, Pierre Pinson, Thomas Deneux, Simon Rumpel and Brice Bathellier ()
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Sebastian Ceballo: UMR9197 CNRS/University Paris Sud
Jacques Bourg: UMR9197 CNRS/University Paris Sud
Alexandre Kempf: UMR9197 CNRS/University Paris Sud
Zuzanna Piwkowska: UMR9197 CNRS/University Paris Sud
Aurélie Daret: UMR9197 CNRS/University Paris Sud
Pierre Pinson: UMR9197 CNRS/University Paris Sud
Thomas Deneux: UMR9197 CNRS/University Paris Sud
Simon Rumpel: University Medical Center, Johannes Gutenberg University
Brice Bathellier: UMR9197 CNRS/University Paris Sud

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Salience is a broad and widely used concept in neuroscience whose neuronal correlates, however, remain elusive. In behavioral conditioning, salience is used to explain various effects, such as stimulus overshadowing, and refers to how fast and strongly a stimulus can be associated with a conditioned event. Here, we identify sounds of equal intensity and perceptual detectability, which due to their spectro-temporal content recruit different levels of population activity in mouse auditory cortex. When using these sounds as cues in a Go/NoGo discrimination task, the degree of cortical recruitment matches the salience parameter of a reinforcement learning model used to analyze learning speed. We test an essential prediction of this model by training mice to discriminate light-sculpted optogenetic activity patterns in auditory cortex, and verify that cortical recruitment causally determines association or overshadowing of the stimulus components. This demonstrates that cortical recruitment underlies major aspects of stimulus salience during reinforcement learning.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09450-0

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