Topic: sensorimotor prediction errors

During behavior, sensation and action operate in closed-loop. Movements shape sensory input, and sensory inputs guide motor commands: where one looks determines what one sees. Through experience, the brain learns the reciprocal relationship between sensory inputs and movements to build internal models that accurately predict the sensory consequences of upcoming actions (sensorimotor predictions). This exchange of sensory inputs and egocentric expectations is at the core of active perception. Experimental investigation of this idea has been sparse and split between behavioral interrogation of s

Predicting the sensory consequences of one’s actions is critical to perception and action in dynamically changing environments. For several established sensorimotor behaviours, such as locomotion and vocalizations, neural correlates of this prediction have been reported throughout sensory cortex. Oftentimes, however, the sensory consequences of an action are abstract, context-dependent, and newly learned, such as when one learns to play an instrument. How does cortex represent such complex sensorimotor rules? To investigate this question, we developed a task in which mice manipulated the frequ