RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Stable representation of sounds in the posterior striatum during flexible auditory decisions
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 180505
DO 10.1101/180505
A1 Lan Guo
A1 William I. Walker
A1 Nicholas D. Ponvert
A1 Phoebe L. Penix
A1 Santiago Jaramillo
YR 2017
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/08/25/180505.abstract
AB The neuronal pathways that link sounds to rewarded actions remain elusive. It is unclear whether neurons in the posterior tail of the dorsal striatum (which receive direct input from the auditory system) mediate action selection, as other striatal circuits do. Here, we examined the role of posterior striatal neurons in auditory decisions in mice. We found that, in contrast to the anterior dorsal striatum, activation of the posterior striatum did not elicit systematic movement. However, activation of posterior striatal neurons during sound presentation in an auditory discrimination task biased the animals’ choices, and transient inactivation of these neurons largely impaired sound discrimination. Moreover, the activity of these neurons reliably encoded stimulus features, but was only minimally influenced by the animals’ choices. Our results suggest that posterior striatal neurons play an essential role in auditory decisions, yet these neurons provide sensory information downstream rather than motor commands during well-learned sound-driven tasks.