Topic: stimulus decoding

The sensory cortex is widely considered to be specialized for perception by interpreting complex sensory patterns while also exhibiting structured forms of representational plasticity of behaviorally-relevant stimuli. Recent evidence, however, suggests that sensory cortical neurons directly encode non-sensory variables such as movement and valence. Conjoint representations of sensory and non-sensory variables in the same network could further hone perception or, alternatively, subserve more integrative cognitive processes. Here, we ask the extent to which the sensory cortex is an associative e

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