PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Davide Reato
AU  - Raphael Steinfeld
AU  - André Tacão-Monteiro
AU  - Alfonso Renart
TI  - Response outcome gates the effect of spontaneous cortical state fluctuations on perceptual decisions
AID  - 10.1101/2021.09.01.458539
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.09.01.458539
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/09/03/2021.09.01.458539.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/09/03/2021.09.01.458539.full
AB  - Sensory responses of cortical neurons are more discriminable when evoked on a base-line of desynchronized spontaneous activity, but cortical desynchronization has not generally been associated with more accurate perceptual decisions. Here we show that mice perform more accurate auditory judgements when activity in the auditory cortex is elevated and desynchronized before stimulus onset, but only if the previous trial was an error, and that this relationship is occluded if previous outcome is ignored. We confirmed that the outcome-dependent effect of brain state on performance is neither due to idiosyncratic associations between the slow components of either signal, nor to the existence of specific cortical states evident only after errors. Instead, errors appear to gate the effect of cortical state fluctuations on discrimination accuracy. Neither facial movements nor pupil size during the baseline were associated with accuracy, but they were predictive of measures of responsivity, such as the probability of not responding to the stimulus or of responding prematurely. These results suggest that the functional role of cortical state on behavior is dynamic and constantly regulated by performance monitoring systems.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.