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Authors & Affiliations
Thomas Lai, Takahiro Noda, Simon Rumpel
Abstract
Inhibitory neurons are pivotal in shaping neural dynamics, acting as a regulatory mechanism to maintain network stability and enhance sensory processing. Their interplay within neural circuits affects stimulus selectivity, temporal precision, and memory functions. On the other hand, mounting evidence suggests that neural responses to sensory stimuli change over time – a phenomenon termed representational drift. Yet, how inhibitory neurons contribute to representational drift remains largely unknown.Here, we examined the collective statistics of inhibitory and excitatory neurons in layers 2/3 of mouse auditory cortex in a dataset comprising over 1,300 inhibitory and 24,000 excitatory neurons longitudinally recorded over several days using two-photon calcium imaging. Using transgene expression from AAV vectors, neurons expressed GCaMP6m and a red nuclear marker, H2B::mCherry. Additionally, interneurons were labeled using an mDlx enhancer element driving expression of a blue nuclear marker. Our analyses revealed distinct functional and morphological characteristics of inhibitory neurons, including broader tuning width, increased population coupling and specific morphological features of the nucleus. Using an SVM decoder, we achieved 74% accuracy in distinguishing excitatory and inhibitory neurons using mDlx-activity as ground truth.To investigate the contribution of inhibitory neurons to representational drift we examined signal and noise correlation stability across days. Inhibitory neurons exhibited significantly higher stability in both signal and noise correlations compared to excitatory neurons, hinting at their potential role in maintaining stability amid ongoing changes in excitatory connectivity.These results enhance our understanding of the functional relevance of inhibitory neurons in neural dynamics and their role in representational drift.