Fig. 9: Air puff disrupts the population place code and causes its systematic shift.

a Real versus decoded positions in control (left panel) and air puff (right panel) epochs of a representative session. b Decoding error in control (black) and air puff (violet) epochs of all sessions used for position estimation (n = 9 sessions). Red indicates significant difference (paired t-test, p < 0.05). c Probability of estimating the position of mice to be at the reward location in pre-air puff control and first inter-air puff (blue traces upper and lower left plot, respectively) and first and second air puff epochs (violet traces, upper and lower right plot, respectively). Grey area corresponds to repeating 1000 times the estimation of random locations outside the reward zone. Light blue circles mark reward locations. Light violet line corresponds to probability without aAP-Pyr cells. Insets right to the air puff-epoch estimations zoom in on the −5 cm to +10 cm segment around the start location of air puff-delivery to better show the significantly higher probability of locating the animal to the reward zone following the air puff. Mean probability of decoding to the reward location in the 0–35 cm from air puff delivery: 0.09 ± 0.14 in 1^st no stimulation epoch vs. 0.28 ± 0.13 in 1^st air puff epoch, Wilcoxon signed rank test: *p = 0.01; 0.11 ± 0.09 in 2^nd no stimulation epoch vs. 0.25 ± 0.08 in 2^nd air puff epoch, Wilcoxon signed rank test **p = 0.008. d Z-scored averaged tuning curve of putative pyramidal cells firing during reward coding theta cycles from a 3 sec segment after air puff stimulation. Pyramidal cells were sorted into quintiles based on within cycle firing rate and their tuning curves were averaged in each quintile (shaded areas correspond to s.e.m.). Peri-reward elevation of place field tuning curve is detectable only in the uppermost quintile collecting the most active place cells.