Fig. 4: Self-generated stimulus history controls transient response magnitude.

a Schematic illustrating the experimental design. At the start of the trial, the mouse was running and whisking freely in air (see boxplot for quantification). After the mouse crossed a threshold locomotion distance and then stopped running, an object entered its whisking field. The mouse voluntarily resumed whisking and touched the object. The mouse then repeatedly stopped and restarted active touch. After running and touching the object for a set distance, the surface retracted, and the trial restarted with free-whisking. Bottom, histogram of firing rates for one neuron during external- and self-GoW stimulation. b Rasters and histograms of spike timing for three neurons from one mouse during external- and self-GoW stimulation. c Population-averaged neuronal firing rates and whisking variables aligned to the onset of touch (2 mice, 74 neurons). d Scatter plot comparing the change in neuronal firing rates during external and self-GoW stimulation (2 mice, 74 neurons, p = 2e⁻¹¹, two-sided Wilcoxon signed rank test). e Boxplot comparing the time mice spent without touch before external and self-GoW stimulation (two-sided Mann–Whitney U-test, p = 0.17, 28 external-GoWs and 40 self-GoWs from 2 mice). The central mark indicates the median. The bottom and top edges of the box indicate the 25th and 75th percentiles, respectively. The bottom and the top edges of the whiskers are the minima and maxima, excluding outliers. ‘+’ indicates outliers. All values are mean ± s.e.m. All firing rates are binned at 10 ms. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.