Topic: whisker-based perceptual decision-making

To establish brain-wide surveys of the areas and neural circuits involved in sensorimotor learning, we have begun to investigate mice designed for targeted recombination in active populations (Fos[2A-iCreER], TRAP2 mice) enabling activity-dependent expression of a Cre-dependent fluorescent reporter within a specific time window. As a first test, we exposed TRAP2 mice to a novel enriched environment after trimming of all whiskers but one and observed a significant increase in the number of TRAPed cells in the barrel cortex compared to control mice. Moreover, minimal expression of the fluorescen