Fig. 5: Repetitions in external motion reduce transient response magnitude.

a Schematic illustrating the different stimulus types and how they are randomly repeated over the course of the experiment. The return motion of the 2nd stimulus, which is a GoW, is selected for analysis in (c). b Left, trial-averaged whisker position relative to surface movement for early (first 1/3rd), middle, and late (last 1/3rd) trials of GoW stimulation (one mouse). Right, trial-averaged whisker position calculated during the GoW response period and plotted as a function of stimulus repetition (8 mice). Error bars represent s.e.m. c Rasters and histograms of spiking in two example neurons divided by early, middle, and late periods. Inset, spike waveforms during the same periods (color-coded). d Magnitude of the external-GoW and self-generated responses as a function of stimulus repetition in the same two example neurons in (c). external and self-firing rates were obtained from transient and sustained windows described in “Methods”. e Population slopes of the linear regression of external-GoW response (8 mice, 223 neurons, p = 2e⁻¹², one-sided t-test) and self responses (8 mice, 98 neurons, p = 0.64, one-sided t-test) as a function of stimulus repetition. 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. f Normalized spike waveform amplitude as a function of stimulus repetition (8 mice) All values are mean ± s.e.m. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.