Supplementary Figure 6: VTA^DA→BA axon responses during training with cues predicting air puff or tail shock.

a, Left: schematic of delivery of air puff aversive outcome during the head-fixed Go/NoGo visual discrimination task. Behavioral performance of trained mice (n = 6 sessions, 1 session/mouse) remained high on the day preceding air puff training when mice were already trained on avoidable quinine task (day = −1) and during 4 days of training with air puff. Middle: percentage of correct responses across RC trials (‘hit rate’) during hungry and sated states. Right: percentage of false alarms (incorrect licking after neutral or aversive cues) across all NC or AC-Un trials during hungry and sated states. Mean ± s.e.m. b, Left: schematic of delivery of tail shock aversive outcome during the head-fixed Go/NoGo visual discrimination task. Behavioral performance of trained mice (n = 6 sessions, 1 session/mouse) during 5 days of training with tail shock remained high. Middle: percentage of correct responses across RC trials (‘hit rate’) during hungry and sated states. Right: percentage of false alarms (incorrect licking after neutral or aversive cues) across all NC or AC-Un trials during hungry and sated states. Mean ± s.e.m. c, Mean response timecourse on first sessions with aversive cue pairing with air puff (top) or tail shock (bottom) (s.e.m. across 6 mice). Trials in which we omitted the air puff (top) or tail shock (bottom) delivery did not have outcome responses and were subtracted from the trials with delivery of air puff (top) or tail shock (bottom) in order to isolate the response specific to the outcome. d, Outcome and cue response magnitudes (mean ± s.e.m., n = 6 mice) on the first day of training with air puff delivery (left) or tail shock delivery (right) separated in 6 consecutive bins (~ 10 trials per bin). Within the first day of training, outcome response magnitudes decreased whereas cue responses increased. Note that training with tail shock delivery followed training with air puff and therefore cue responses began at an already elevated magnitude. e, Outcome and cue response magnitudes (mean ± s.e.m., n = 6 mice) across days of training with air puff (left) or tail shock (right). Across days, outcome responses continued to decrease while cue responses increased. f, An outcome bias was initially present on the first day of training with air puff delivery, but this bias showed a significant decrease following days of training. Mean ± s.e.m., n = 6 mice, * p = 0.03, two-sided Wilcoxon sign-rank. g, Across all days of training with air puff (left) and tail shock (right) delivery, the RC response magnitude remained stable. Mean ± s.e.m., n = 6 mice.