Fig. 5: Late silencing of V1 selectively impairs task performance of sessions with slow reaction time. | Nature Communications

Fig. 5: Late silencing of V1 selectively impairs task performance of sessions with slow reaction time.

From: Multisensory task demands temporally extend the causal requirement for visual cortex in perception

Fig. 5

a Cre-dependent ChR2 expression in bilateral V1 of PvCre mice allowed robust silencing by locally enhancing PV-mediated inhibition. A1 = auditory cortex, S1 = primary somatosensory cortex. b Dorsal view of flattened cortical hemispheres sectioned approximately through layer 4 showing localized viral expression in bilateral V1. (Repeated with similar results for all 28 mice) c High-pass filtered trace from an example V1 recording site showing robust silencing of multi-unit spiking activity during bouts of 1-s photostimulation (blue bars). d Baseline-normalized firing rate averaged over V1 neurons from UST and MST mice. Control trials are visual hits. Mean ± SEM. e Behavioral response rates for control, early, and late silencing trials follow plotting conventions of Fig. 1c–e. f Same as e, but for MST mice. Both early and late silencing affected visual change detection rates. For the increase in FA see Methods. g Early silencing affected visual discrimination performance (d-prime) for both saliencies across UST and MST cohorts. (ANOVA, UST n = 18, MST n = 34 sessions, UST Thr, F(1,32) = 16.71, p = 0.0032; UST Max, F(1,32) = 14.80, p = 0.0064; MST Thr, F(1,59) = 35.32, p = 2 × 10−6; MST Max, F(1,58) = 32.56, p = 5 × 10−6, each corrected for four multiple comparisons (Bonferroni-Holm)) h Effect of late silencing depended on task type: late silencing only reduced d-prime in MST (same n as g, ANOVA, Thr, F(1,54) = 13.90, p = 0.00553, Max, F(1,53) = 13.48, p = 0.0067), but not UST mice (Thr, F(1,32) = 0.29, p = 1, Max, F(1,30) = 1.19, p = 0.85). For both g and h, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01,***p < 0.001, errorbars denote inter-quartile range. i The effect of early silencing (quantified as the reduction in d-prime) was not significantly correlated with the median reaction time in control trials from the same session (ANOVA, n = 40 conditions, F(1,33) = 1.71, r = 0.048, p = 0.865). j Same as i but for late silencing. The effect of late silencing was significantly correlated with the reaction time (n = 45, F(1,15) = 10.04, r = 0.423, p = 0.03).

Back to article page