TY - JOUR T1 - Existing function in primary visual cortex is not perturbed by new skill acquisition of a non-matched sensory task JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2021.02.08.430302 SP - 2021.02.08.430302 AU - Brian B. Jeon AU - Thomas Fuchs AU - Steven M. Chase AU - Sandra J. Kuhlman Y1 - 2022/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/05/11/2021.02.08.430302.abstract N2 - Acquisition of new skills has the potential to disturb existing network function. To directly assess whether previously acquired cortical function is altered during learning, mice were trained in an abstract task in which selected activity patterns were rewarded using an optical brain-computer interface device coupled to primary visual cortex (V1) neurons. Excitatory neurons were longitudinally recorded using 2-photon calcium imaging. Despite significant changes in local neural activity during task performance, tuning properties and stimulus encoding assessed outside of the trained context were not perturbed. Similarly, stimulus tuning was stable in neurons that remained responsive following a different, visual discrimination training task. However, visual discrimination training increased the rate of representational drift. Our results indicate that while some forms of perceptual learning may modify the contribution of individual neurons to stimulus encoding, new skill learning is not inherently disruptive to the quality of stimulus representation in adult V1.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. ER -