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Distributed coding of choice, action and engagement across the mouse brain.

ABSTRACT: Vision, choice, action and behavioural engagement arise from neuronal activity that may be distributed across brain regions. Here we delineate the spatial distribution of neurons underlying these processes. We used Neuropixels probes1,2 to record from approximately 30,000 neurons in 42 brain regions of mice performing a visual discrimination task3. Neurons in nearly all regions responded non-specifically when the mouse initiated an action. By contrast, neurons encoding visual stimuli and upcoming choices occupied restricted regions in the neocortex, basal ganglia and midbrain. Choice signals were rare and emerged with indistinguishable timing across regions. Midbrain neurons were activated before contralateral choices and were suppressed before ipsilateral choices, whereas forebrain neurons could prefer either side. Brain-wide pre-stimulus activity predicted engagement in individual trials and in the overall task, with enhanced subcortical but suppressed neocortical activity during engagement. These results reveal organizing principles for the distribution of neurons encoding behaviourally relevant variables across the mouse brain.

SUBMITTER: Steinmetz NA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6913580 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Distributed coding of choice, action and engagement across the mouse brain.

Steinmetz Nicholas A NA Zatka-Haas Peter P Carandini Matteo M Harris Kenneth D KD

Nature 20191127 7786

Vision, choice, action and behavioural engagement arise from neuronal activity that may be distributed across brain regions. Here we delineate the spatial distribution of neurons underlying these processes. We used Neuropixels probes<sup>1,2</sup> to record from approximately 30,000 neurons in 42 brain regions of mice performing a visual discrimination task<sup>3</sup>. Neurons in nearly all regions responded non-specifically when the mouse initiated an action. By contrast, neurons encoding visu ...[more]

PMID: 31776518

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Project description:IntroductionOur brain is bombarded by a diverse range of visual stimuli, which are converted into corresponding neuronal responses and processed throughout the visual system. The neural activity patterns that result from these external stimuli vary depending on the object or scene being observed, but they also change as a result of internal or behavioural states. This raises the question of to what extent it is possible to predict the presented visual stimuli from neural activity across behavioural states, and how this varies in different brain regions.MethodsTo address this question, we assessed the computational capacity of decoders to extract visual information in awake behaving mice, by analysing publicly available standardised datasets from the Allen Brain Institute. We evaluated how natural movie frames can be distinguished based on the activity of units recorded in distinct brain regions and under different behavioural states. This analysis revealed the spectrum of visual information present in different brain regions in response to binary and multiclass classification tasks.ResultsVisual cortical areas showed highest classification accuracies, followed by thalamic and midbrain regions, with hippocampal regions showing close to chance accuracy. In addition, we found that behavioural variability led to a decrease in decoding accuracy, whereby large behavioural changes between train and test sessions reduced the classification performance of the decoders. A generalised linear model analysis suggested that this deterioration in classification might be due to an independent modulation of neural activity by stimulus and behaviour. Finally, we reconstructed the natural movie frames from optimal linear classifiers, and observed a strong similarity between reconstructed and actual movie frames. However, the similarity was significantly higher when the decoders were trained and tested on sessions with similar behavioural states.ConclusionOur analysis provides a systematic assessment of visual coding in the mouse brain, and sheds light on the spectrum of visual information present across brain areas and behavioural states.

Dataset Information

Distributed coding of choice, action and engagement across the mouse brain.

Publications

Distributed coding of choice, action and engagement across the mouse brain.

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