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Posterior parietal cortex guides visual decisions in rats

Angela M. Licata, View ORCID ProfileMatthew T. Kaufman, David Raposo, Michael B. Ryan, John P. Sheppard, View ORCID ProfileAnne K. Churchland
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/066639
Angela M. Licata
1Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY
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Matthew T. Kaufman
1Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY
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David Raposo
1Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY
2Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, Lisboa, Portugal
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Michael B. Ryan
3University of California, San Francisco CA
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John P. Sheppard
4Northwestern University, Chicago IL
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Anne K. Churchland
1Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY
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  • ORCID record for Anne K. Churchland
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Abstract

Neurons in putative decision-making structures can reflect both sensory and decision signals, making their causal role in decisions unclear. Here, we tested whether rat posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is causal for processing visual sensory signals or instead for accumulating evidence for decision alternatives. We optogenetically disrupted PPC activity during decision-making and compared effects on decisions guided by auditory vs. visual evidence. Deficits were largely restricted to visual decisions. To further test for visual dominance in PPC, we evaluated electrophysiological responses following individual sensory events and observed much larger responses following visual stimuli than auditory stimuli. Finally, we measured spike count variability during stimulus presentation and decision formation. This sharply decreased, suggesting the network is stabilized by inputs, unlike what would be expected if sensory signals were locally accumulated. Our findings argue that PPC plays a causal role in discriminating visual signals that are accumulated elsewhere.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted July 29, 2016.
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Posterior parietal cortex guides visual decisions in rats
Angela M. Licata, Matthew T. Kaufman, David Raposo, Michael B. Ryan, John P. Sheppard, Anne K. Churchland
bioRxiv 066639; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/066639
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Posterior parietal cortex guides visual decisions in rats
Angela M. Licata, Matthew T. Kaufman, David Raposo, Michael B. Ryan, John P. Sheppard, Anne K. Churchland
bioRxiv 066639; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/066639

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