Fig. 7: Area RL is sufficient for cross-modal generalization.
a Schematic of the behavioral experiment with direct ChR2-mediated optostimulations of RL subregions following modality switch. b Example cranial window of an Ai32 mouse expressing ChR2-eYFP after injection of AAV1.CaMKIIa.Cre viral vectors in area RL. Atlas overlaid for reference. Subregions of RL encoding top or bottom stimuli are indicated in blue or red, respectively. Blue light patterns are shaped to match these subregions (see “Methods”). c Left: Average task performance and conditional lick probabilities across sessions for mice experiencing a rule-preserving modality switch from the whisker task to the optogenetic task (N = 7 mice). Right: detection (purple) and discrimination (green) performance distribution for the session before and after the switch (two-sided paired t test comparing days, Det.: N.S. p = 0.057; Discr.: *p = 0.014). Performances are also tested against chance level (two-sided t test, Det.: ***p = 5.1 × 10–6 and ***p = 7.7 × 10–6; Discr.: ***p = 2.3 × 10–5 and ***p = 2.1 × 10–5). Error bars: S.E.M. d Average detection performance (black) and conditional lick probability for the bottom stimulus (red) or in the absence of stimuli (purple) across sessions for mice switching from the whisker task to the habituation phase to respond to optogenetic stimulations in the bottom-encoding part of RL. e Same as panel c but for mice undergoing a rule-reversing switch (N = 6 mice, two-sided paired t test comparing days, Det.: *p = 0.019; Discr.: ***p = 1.1 × 10−4). Performances are also tested against chance level (two-sided t test, Det.: ***p = 5.6 × 10−5 and *p = 0.019; Discr.: ***p = 7.9 × 10−5 and Blank p = 0.43). f Same as panel d but for mice undergoing habituation to respond to optogenetic stimulations in the top-encoding part of RL. g Left: Comparison of the number of sessions required to reach the detection criterion between mice undergoing a rule-preserving switch and those undergoing a rule-reversing switch (N = 7 mice for rule-preserving and N = 6 mice for rule-reversing, unpaired two-sided t test, *p = 0.032). Right: Comparison of detection performance at the end of the optogenetic habituation phase (unpaired two-sided t test, N.S. p = 0.88). Error bars: S.E.M. h Same as panel b but for optogenetic stimulations of area AL. i Same as panel d but for optogenetic stimulations of AL (N = 7 mice). The detection criterion was never reached during this habituation phase.
