Orbitofrontal control of visual cortex gain promotes visual associative learning

Dechen Liu, Juan Deng, Zhewei Zhang, Zhi-Yu Zhang, Yan-Gang Sun, Tianming Yang and Haishan Yao ()
Additional contact information
Dechen Liu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Juan Deng: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Zhewei Zhang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Zhi-Yu Zhang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Yan-Gang Sun: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Tianming Yang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Haishan Yao: Chinese Academy of Sciences

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Abstract The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) encodes expected outcomes and plays a critical role in flexible, outcome-guided behavior. The OFC projects to primary visual cortex (V1), yet the function of this top-down projection is unclear. We find that optogenetic activation of OFC projection to V1 reduces the amplitude of V1 visual responses via the recruitment of local somatostatin-expressing (SST) interneurons. Using mice performing a Go/No-Go visual task, we show that the OFC projection to V1 mediates the outcome-expectancy modulation of V1 responses to the reward-irrelevant No-Go stimulus. Furthermore, V1-projecting OFC neurons reduce firing during expectation of reward. In addition, chronic optogenetic inactivation of OFC projection to V1 impairs, whereas chronic activation of SST interneurons in V1 improves the learning of Go/No-Go visual task, without affecting the immediate performance. Thus, OFC top-down projection to V1 is crucial to drive visual associative learning by modulating the response gain of V1 neurons to non-relevant stimulus.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16609-7 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-16609-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16609-7

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().