Fig. 3: Neural activity patterns during aperture discrimination task.

a Schematic representation of a head-mounted EIB. b Representative raster plots of single unit spiking activity in BC, VPM, POm, and ZIv, aligned to the time of whisker-aperture contact (magenta line). Below each raster plot, corresponding PSTHs display mean firing rates. c Onset latencies of neuronal responses following whisker contact with the aperture across different brain regions. Latencies were computed based on the first significant deviation from baseline activity (see Methods). Violin plots depict the distribution of response latencies, with mean values highlighted as bars, and median with IQR as filled circles with whiskers. d Schematic representation of a head-mounted UCLA Miniscope V4. e Spatial footprints of POm units from one example imaging session (left), with four touch-modulated units highlighted in color. Example normalized calcium transients (ΔF/F0) from the four touch-modulated POm units (middle), with magenta lines indicating whisker touches with the aperture. Trial-aligned calcium transients of a representative POm unit and averaged across trials below. Lick onsets are marked in blue. f Population PSTHs displaying the mean firing rate (± SEM) of different brain areas, for wide (green) and narrow aperture trials (red), over all expert sessions. Neural activity is aligned to the time of whisker-aperture contact. For POm, normalized calcium activity (±SEM) from 39 POm neurons detected in a single session is shown. g Venn diagrams showing proportions of touch-modulated units/neurons per brain region (from a total sample indicated by black circles). Units/neurons responding selectively to the wide aperture are shown in green, those responding to the narrow aperture in red. The intersection represents units responsive to both apertures.