Abstract
Cue-triggered recall of learned temporal sequences is an important cognitive function that has been attributed to higher brain areas. Here recordings in both anesthetized and awake rats demonstrate that after repeated stimulation with a moving spot that evoked sequential firing of an ensemble of primary visual cortex (V1) neurons, just a brief flash at the starting point of the motion path was sufficient to evoke a sequential firing pattern that reproduced the activation order evoked by the moving spot. The speed of recalled spike sequences may reflect the internal dynamics of the network rather than the motion speed. In awake rats, such recall was observed during a synchronized ('quiet wakeful') brain state having large-amplitude, low-frequency local field potential (LFP) but not in a desynchronized ('active') state having low-amplitude, high-frequency LFP. Such conditioning-enhanced, cue-evoked sequential spiking of a V1 ensemble may contribute to experience-based perceptual inference in a brain state–dependent manner.
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Acknowledgements
We thank G. Buzsaki, H.D. Lv and H.S. Yao for comments and suggestions. This work was supported by 973 Program (2011CBA00400), SSSTC Program GJHZ0902 and the Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KSCX2-YW-R-29). Y.D. was supported in part by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and M.-m.P. by a grant from the US National Institutes of Health (NS036999).
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S.X. and W.J. conducted all experiments and performed all data analyses; S.X., W.J., M-m.P. and Y.D. designed the experiments and wrote the manuscript.
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Supplementary Movie 1
Awake head-fixed rat during visual stimulation. This video shows the behavior (eye movement, facial movement and whiskering) and LFP of awake head-fixed rat during testing and conditioning periods. Red circle indicates pupil size and position. Arrows point to reflections of the test stimuli (S and E, presented with an LCD monitor in front of the left eye) off the eyeball. The stationary bright spot on the left of the eye is the reflection of the infrared light source that provides illumination for the camera. Horizontal and vertical eye positions are shown in the traces below. Also shown are simultaneously recorded LFP, together with red/blue lines indicating synchronized/desynchronized brain states, and the short bars below indicating periods of visual stimulation. Note that the desynchronized brain state is associated with some facial and whisker movement. (MOV 3064 kb)
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Xu, S., Jiang, W., Poo, Mm. et al. Activity recall in a visual cortical ensemble. Nat Neurosci 15, 449–455 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3036
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3036
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