Arousal and locomotion make distinct contributions to cortical activity patterns and visual encoding

By Martin A. Vinck, R. Batista-Brito, Ulf Knoblich, Jessica A. Cardin. bioRxiv, 2014

787 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Spontaneous and sensory-evoked cortical activity is highly state-dependent, yet relatively little is known about transitions between distinct waking states. Patterns of activity in mouse V1 differ dramatically between quiescence and locomotion, but this difference could be explained by either motor feedback or a change in arousal levels. We recorded single cells and local field potentials from area V1 in mice head-fixed on a running wheel and monitored pupil diameter to assay arousal. Using naturally occurring and induced state transitions, we dissociated arousal and locomotion effects in V1. Arousal suppressed spontaneous firing and strongly altered the temporal patterning of population activity. Moreover, heightened arousal increased the signal-to-noise ratio of visual responses and reduced noise correlations. In contrast, increased firing in anticipation of and during movement was attributable to locomotion effects. Our findings suggest complementary roles of arousal and locomotion in promoting functional flexibility in cortical circuits. Abbreviations LFP Local Field Potential V1 primary visual cortex PD pupil diameter FS fast spiking RS regular spiking FR firing rate L-on locomotion onset L-off locomotion offset L locomotion LE early locomotion LL late locomotion Q quiescence QE early quiescence QM middle quiescence QL late quiescence SNR signal-to-noise ratio ITI Inter-trial-interval LV local coefficient of variation ISI inter-spike-interval s.e.m. standard error of the mean SD standard deviation ID Isolation Distance

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Sensory Systems

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f5cfdcad7bf8f81ba739427e837dd767592ee599

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Citations in the corpus

Relationships between pupil diameter and neuronal activity in the locus coeruleus, colliculi, and cingulate cortex (2015, background): “Pupil diameter also can covary with neuronal activity in cortex, which is thought to reflect, at least in part, modulation by the LC-NE system (Vinck et al., 2015; Reimer et al., 2014; Ebitz and Platt, 2015; Eldar et al., 2013; McGinley et al., 2015).”
Waking State: Rapid Variations Modulate Neural and Behavioral Responses (2015, positive): “, airpuff) induced transition from low to high arousal (Vinck et al., 2015).”
Cortical membrane potential signature of optimal states for sensory signal detection (2015, methodology): “Two recent studies of mouse visual cortex have also revealed the powerful effects of arousal, as indexed by pupil diameter, on spontaneous activity and sensory-evoked effects in the absence of movement (Reimer et al., 2014; Vinck et al., 2015).”