Supplementary Figure 5: Additional information related to the BF electrical stimulation experiments

(a) Response of bursting (n=21) and other (n=23) BF neurons to the go sound (left panel) and brief BF electrical stimulation (middle and right panels show different time scales, 11 sessions from 4 rats). Responses of individual neurons are color-coded in the middle and lower rows for bursting and other neurons, respectively. BF bursting neurons, but not other neurons, demonstrated near complete inhibition in response to BF electrical stimulation after a brief rebound excitation. (b) Schematic of a variant of the electrical stimulation experiment, which was the same as the version shown in Fig.8a except that the stimulated trials were rewarded as the non-stimulated trials, so that the presence of BF stimulation did not change reward contingency. In this task configuration, even if rats can perceive BF stimulation as a sensory cue, there was no reason to use perceived BF stimulation to modify behavior. (c) Distribution of estimated SSRT in two variants of the stimulation experiment. Stimulation slowed down fixation port exits in 18/20 sessions (7 rats) when stimulated trials were not rewarded (gray), and in 9/18 sessions (3 rats) when stimulated trials were rewarded (blue). SSRT estimates in the two variants of the stimulation experiment were not different (mean SSRT 111ms vs. 108ms, F(1,25)=0.01, p=0.91).