Early selection of task-relevant features through population gating

Joao Barbosa (), Rémi Proville, Chris C. Rodgers, Michael R. DeWeese, Srdjan Ostojic and Yves Boubenec
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Joao Barbosa: INSERM U960, Ecole Normale Superieure - PSL Research University
Rémi Proville: Tailored Data Solutions
Chris C. Rodgers: Emory University
Michael R. DeWeese: University of California
Srdjan Ostojic: INSERM U960, Ecole Normale Superieure - PSL Research University
Yves Boubenec: École Normale Supérieure PSL Research University, CNRS

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Brains can gracefully weed out irrelevant stimuli to guide behavior. This feat is believed to rely on a progressive selection of task-relevant stimuli across the cortical hierarchy, but the specific across-area interactions enabling stimulus selection are still unclear. Here, we propose that population gating, occurring within primary auditory cortex (A1) but controlled by top-down inputs from prelimbic region of medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), can support across-area stimulus selection. Examining single-unit activity recorded while rats performed an auditory context-dependent task, we found that A1 encoded relevant and irrelevant stimuli along a common dimension of its neural space. Yet, the relevant stimulus encoding was enhanced along an extra dimension. In turn, mPFC encoded only the stimulus relevant to the ongoing context. To identify candidate mechanisms for stimulus selection within A1, we reverse-engineered low-rank RNNs trained on a similar task. Our analyses predicted that two context-modulated neural populations gated their preferred stimulus in opposite contexts, which we confirmed in further analyses of A1. Finally, we show in a two-region RNN how population gating within A1 could be controlled by top-down inputs from PFC, enabling flexible across-area communication despite fixed inter-areal connectivity.

Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-42519-5

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