Extended Data Fig. 9: Statistics and additional analysis of hierarchy measures.

a, P values for pairwise comparisons of time to first spike between areas (two-sided Wilcoxon rank–sum test with Benjamini-Hochberg false discovery rate correction). b, Comparison between time-to-first-spike measured in response to the onset of the flash stimulus (‘flash’) versus during the inter-stimulus interval which corresponds to spontaneous firing (‘spontaneous’). The colour scheme is the same as in Fig. 4; error bars represent mean ± 95% confidence intervals; n = 15,713 units from 58 mice. c, Relationship between time-to-first spike and mean firing rate for a given area, either in response to the flash stimulus, or during the inter-trial interval (‘spontaneous’). d, P values for pairwise comparisons of receptive field size between areas. Colour scale is the same as in a. e, P values for pairwise comparisons of modulation index between area. Colour scale is the same as in a. f, Distribution of intrinsic timescale across units in each of 8 areas. g, Correlation between mean intrinsic timescale and anatomical hierarchy score. The absence of a significant correlation is inconsistent with the findings from ref. ¹³, in which it was shown that intrinsic timescale increases with hierarchical level in primates. This discrepancy may stem from differences between mouse and primate neocortex, or the fact that the areas we have recorded do not span the full range of the mouse cortical hierarchy. In addition, it is known that standard exponential fitting procedures produce biased and unreliable timescale estimates, which may account for the null result we observed⁹¹. h, P-values for pairwise comparisons of response decay timescales between areas. Colour scale is the same as in a. i, Distribution of overall firing rates for all units in each area. j, Correlation between mean firing rate and anatomical hierarchy score. k, Relationship between change modulation index and anatomical hierarchy score, grouped by hit and miss trials. l, Relationship between pre-change response and anatomical hierarchy score, grouped by active and passive trials. m, Relationship between change response and anatomical hierarchy score, grouped by active and passive trials. n, Relationship between baseline firing rate and anatomical hierarchy score, grouped by active and passive trials. o, Decoder accuracy as a function of number of neurons used for decoding, averaged across all brain regions and behaviour sessions. p, Decoder accuracy for each brain region (mean ± s.e.m., averaged across sessions) is not correlated with the anatomical hierarchy score. r_P, Pearson correlation coefficient; r_S, Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient.