Topic: metastable attractors

Behavioral states in humans and animals vary over time, and these shifts alter cortical processing and cognitive function. For example, one striking result is an observed inverted-U relationship between arousal and performance on signal detection tasks. However, there is currently a need for mechanistic models that can explain these state-dependent effects. Here we address this challenge in the context of arousal-dependent auditory processing in rodents. In experiments where mice were presented tones of different frequencies, we found that frequency information could be best decoded from popu