RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Context-dependent signaling of coincident auditory and visual events in primary visual cortex
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 258970
DO 10.1101/258970
A1 Thomas Deneux
A1 Alexandre Kempf
A1 Brice Bathellier
YR 2018
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/02/03/258970.abstract
AB Detecting rapid coincident changes across sensory modalities is essential to recognize sudden threats and events. Using two-photon calcium imaging in identified cell types in awake mice, we show that auditory cortex (AC) neurons projecting to primary visual cortex (V1) preferentially encode the abrupt onsets of sounds. In V1, a sub-population of layer 1 interneurons gates this selective cross-modal information by a suppression specific to the absence of visual inputs. However, when large auditory onsets coincide with visual stimuli, visual responses are strongly boosted in V1. Thus, a dynamic asymmetric circuit across AC and V1 specifically identifies visual events starting simultaneously to sudden sounds, potentially catalyzing localization of new sound sources in the visual field.